[danialtz]

Privacy is ranked the second after security in a recent survey from ECB, so it is a known demand and design criteria for both sides.

CBDC will co-exist with cash for years to come. Fully monitored CBDC will be at a high disadvantage by citizens specially in modern world, while fully private one would not be allowed by CBs due to need for transparency.

Here also comes the product builders. We could design a CBDC that is fully transparent, which is the easiest to build, these days mostly DLT based. The challenge is how to enable some TXNs to be private by design and not only policies.

A major country is taking the extreme case of full transparency, while ECB and others like Canada are strongly focusing on privacy as a feature.

[brobdingnagians]

"privacy" as defined by the grocery store down the street can't see your history of purchases or privacy as in the government doesn't have every detail of every sexual fetish you've ever paid for? The FBI has been stockpiling that for decades.

Those are very different things, and from Europe's approach to the GDPR, I think it is the first.

[WEFwoof]

Rather privacy as there can't be a direct connection between you and each one of your transactions, nor can the ECB refuse and cancel transaction of yours or completely exclude you from the system altogether.

The former is almost a given that it will in fact be possible. The latter was raised as an added benefit of the system either by BIS's Carstens or IMF's Georgieva -- can't recall with certainty currently. Both are promoted as weapons against black markets, corruption, and terrorism.

Yet those who are willing to give up liberty for safety, and all that.

[danialtz]

Great point.

The control of privacy should be in the protocol and not in the hands of the authorities, if there is going to be a trust built around it. Otherwise, we have what is there today, without the anonymous cash element.

There are different designs today to address this concern, see e.g. the one from Bank of Canada, as one of the frontiers of privacy for citizen: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/06/staff-analytical-note-20...