[ricardobeat]

Credit cards, iDeal, SWIFT, Paypal, Venmo, etc are all fully traceable. Anonimity at the protocol level is not a design goal for any of these.

Being worse is debatable: the main difference is the government being able to execute blocking on their own, vs having to convince all banking institutions to do it for them - doesn't sound hard as the govt will always have all the leverage.

Also important to note that BCB (the central bank in Brazil) is autonomous, and technically protected from political influence, thought that ground has been proven shaky.

[lobocinza]

Indeed the issue was leverage. The problem is CDBC. The govs plan is to end money fungibility. Once they get that leverage, MasterCard or central bank is just a detail.