One of the hardest questions in the future of money is becoming impossible to ignore:

Who gets to see the ledger?

The European Central Bank is currently developing the digital euro with privacy as an explicit part of its design. Its proposed offline system is intended to provide cash-like privacy, where payment details would be known only to the payer and recipient. The ECB also says the digital euro is intended to complement cash rather than simply eliminate it.

That highlights a problem crypto hasn’t completely solved either.

A financial system needs enough transparency to verify supply, rules, ownership and institutional behavior, but putting every person’s purchases, balances and financial relationships on a permanently visible ledger creates an entirely different problem.

For BBI’s future ledger research, that distinction may prove fundamental:

What needs to be provable is not necessarily what needs to be public.

Transparency for institutions. Privacy for people. Verification where the two meet.

The Wall’s competing proposal “I should be able to see everything” remains under review.

Source Link: European Central Bank digital-euro privacy materials.