Tag Archives: Confidentiality

In a speech, the ECB’s Fabio Panetta argues that a digital Euro is necessary because [i]n the digital age … banknotes could lose their role as a reference value in payments, undermining the integrity of the monetary system. Central banks must therefore consider how to ensure that their money can remain a payments anchor in a digital world. He argues that outsourcing the provision of central bank money [to stable coin providers] … would endanger monetary sovereignty [as would the absence...

In a CEPR discussion paper, Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks, and Christoph Trebesch document “How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments:” China is the world’s largest official creditor, but we lack basic facts about the terms and conditions of its lending. … We collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries … First, the Chinese contracts contain...

The Economist reports about a new digital currency platform, Zcash. The platform could handle more transactions than for example, Bitcoin. The open-source project backed by outside investors offers confidentiality: Bitcoin obscures the identity of currency owners, but the “blockchain”, the ledger that keeps track of all the coins, is open and can be analysed to see the flows of funds. This is a serious barrier for banks: blockchains could reveal their trading strategies and information...