Will the digital euro really be equivalent to cash? (blog.xot.nl)

submitted 9 months ago by ray@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] themurphy@lemmy.world 54 points 9 months ago

With this digital euro, all fees are paid by the EU. Which is the right way to do it. It shouldn't cost anything to spend and transfer money - just as it doesn't with cash.

I can't get my head around how much money VISA and MasterCard is pulling out of society today.

How banks take fees for you to do a simple money transfer.

Scumbags.

[-] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It shouldn’t cost anything to spend and transfer money - just as it doesn’t with cash.

Yeah there's no such thing as free lunch. Cash is not free and neither is this new EU currency. The costs are hidden from you but they are there.

When you buy a pizza in cash for example, you're not just paying for the pizza. You're also paying for the business to send someone to the bank regularly to deposit earnings and and withdraw coins to give customers as change. And the bank is doing the same thing - all those armoured cars delivering cash to ATMs around the city? Those are not cheap and you are paying for them.

Worst of all, cash tends to go missing - Maybe an employee gave a customer two twenty dollar bills in change when it should have been one... or maybe the employee pocketed the 20 bucks. The business has no way of knowing which and both happen regularly. Either way the customer ultimately pays - the business sets prices high enough to cover those costs.

Ask anyone who keeps track of this stuff for a large business, they will tell you credit cards are cheaper for them.

I can’t get my head around how much money VISA and MasterCard is pulling out of society today.

It's mostly insurance. Because while cash goes "missing" more often, credit cards still has issues (stolen card numbers and occasionally software bugs) and unlike cash, where the business pays, with credit cards often VISA/MasterCard often have to pay. The fees are partly to cover that. And the fees also cover the money they spent trying to prevent money from going missing (they spend a lot of money on that).

How banks take fees for you to do a simple money transfer.

Mine doesn't. They make monthly deposits into my account based on how much money I have there and how much they were able to profit off using it for investments.

it's a Credit Union, so technically I'm a shareholder and the entire business model of the bank is to make money for their shareholders (me). You too can be a bank shareholder. The only "fees" they charge are to pay for employees and customer service, and those are far less than what I earn in interest on my savings.

I can’t get my head around how much money VISA and MasterCard is pulling out of society today.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago

Yes, but with state digital currency it's not a profit driven effort behind the cost, less cost inflation and shareholder pressure.

[-] themurphy@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Also very good points. This is in general a very good move by the EU, and I'd wish we had it as a currency in my country.

It's also a choice to use, so if you don't like it then keep use your VISA/MasterCard.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago

Exactly.

And perhaps to make a more distinguishing contrast I would add that you can also keep using paper currency as well (banknotes still have the kind of anonymity online transaction can't offer, yet even there is still a huge distinction between government hopefully not selling your data vs megacorps rallying on that).

[-] Zorque@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago

Just because its not a free lunch doesn't mean you have to charge as much as you possibly can for it.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 2 points 8 months ago

Yup. Few years back I remember asking a small shop if they would rather I use cash or card, and they said that the card, even with transaction fees, was much cheaper for them. When I visited them recently they now had a "no cash" sign.

[-] DogPeePoo@lemm.ee 29 points 9 months ago

As long as it can continue to be devalued through inflation and central banks— then, yes.

But unlike cash every purchase you make can be traced with a digital euro.

Orwellian

[-] Nomad@infosec.pub 8 points 9 months ago

This guy gets it

[-] orrk@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

you use anything other than cash?

if the answer is yes, you don't get it

[-] Iceblade02@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Naw, digital transfers are convenient saving both time and money for me and everybody else. However, trying to force people into digital transactions, or remove cash entirely is a huge problem. I always have a decent amount of hard currency on me, and occasionally use that money.

The majority of my transactions are done digitally however, purely because of convenience.

[-] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 8 months ago

I use digital transactions not for convenience, but when they're unavoidable, such as paying a person in another city or paying for an online order that wants you to pay in advance. For everything else (including most online orders) - cash rules.

[-] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 8 months ago

This depends on how the system is going to be designed and implemented.

[-] anivia@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

It's possible to implement it in a way that purchases can't be traced. XMR has proven that. But there is absolutely no way the EU is going to take that route, it will for sure be traceable

[-] muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Dont worry about that people will call u paranoid for saying it.

[-] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 9 months ago

As long as the right concept wins - yes.

For example GNU Taler could be used for the digital euro. Its anonymous for the buyer, backed by banks and traditional banking infrastructure and fast.

Its also somewhat unlikely to win. Lets hope the people in brussels make the right decision.

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 9 points 9 months ago

As long as the right concept wins - yes.

I think the one aspect that has the potential to kill the whole concept is the limit on how much one person can own. There would be little to no point in using it, since the potential advantage of no fees or bank nonsense is more than offset by the inconvenience of not being able to get my salary in it.

If there is no limit, we basically nationalized commercial banking, or at least eliminated the concept of banks providing convenience as opposed to interest as a service. I'm not sure if that's a bad idea, given that we seem to have a major debt crisis every ten years, usually stemming from insane lending from banks. Maybe not all at once though. My uneducated opinion is that it would be great if we could impose a limit, and gradually raise it until it reaches a point where it is meaningless.

[-] deafboy@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

GNU Taler does not act like cash at all. It has properties that leaks data from businesses for the purpose of taxation.

[-] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 9 months ago

True. However, I think its unreasonable to demand a digital euro that is also private for businesses, as the only benefit from that would be enabling tax evasion and selling illegal goods. There are differences between physical anonymous payments and online anonymous payments. The problem is scale and reach. You cant just send millions of euro in cash to someone in a different country, you can with online payments. That allows for money laundering and illegal markets at a scale never seen before.

So yes, it will be different than cash, but your identity cant be traced, so id call it a worthy replacement.

[-] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Ultimately, businesses get all of their money from customers, and those customers are people who deserve privacy. Some businesses have other businesses as customers but those other businesses also get all their money from customers.

If you make all this stuff public, then you are basically allowing customers to be tracked.

And most of the money businesses spend also, ultimately, go to people - their employees or indirectly to employees of their suppliers (or to investors, who are also people).

There's really no way around it except to provide privacy across the board and the best way to avoid tax evasion is by having clear taxation policies that can't be avoided. Sales tax, for example, is an unavoidable tax on business. Property taxes are also unavoidable. Import/Export taxes are very difficult to avoid.

Where our governments go wrong is trying to tax "profits" which are nearly impossible to enforce. Did the company really spend a hundred million dollars buying a patent? Or was the money actually for something else and the patent was just a cover? Is that old painting in the meeting room really worth ten million or is it a fake? If it's fake, is the buyer a victim or was it money laundering? You can't possibly regulate that stuff and transparency into transactions will only catch out idiots. Most people running big businesses are not idiots.

[-] toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 months ago

Hmm, i don't entirely understand your point. Buyers are private using Taler, and you can't find out who bought something. You cant trace a coin to its owner. And last I checked, businesses dont pay in cash, it goes through a bank, so the privacy level doesn't change compared to what we do today.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You can be denied your money at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Can't see anything going wrong here. /s

[-] smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 8 months ago

That depends how this system would be made.

[-] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 5 points 8 months ago

And you expect the system to be made in such a way that the government doesn't have control over you? The individual?

[-] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

It won't be the same because I can't pay for drugs with digital money.

[-] themurphy@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

You can.

Only once tho.

[-] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 2 points 8 months ago

You can. Monero is indeed digital money.

[-] mihies@kbin.social 1 points 8 months ago

From what I read, you should be able to. 🤷‍♂️ In theory 🥹

[-] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, try to convince my dealer, no way he'll accept anything else then cash.

[-] eleitl@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

The most relevant question: can you pay taxes with it?

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Is this about GNU Taler or is EU developing one.

[-] ilmagico@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

TL;DR: No. Not even close.

[-] Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It remains to be seen, but you will probably make the switch without knowing or being able to tell the difference.

Eventually who knows, maybe "your" money will expire, can only be used on certain products, or whatever the real owners want.

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

GNU Taler is more fit to be the next mainstream way of paying with your phone or online. But it definitely does not replace cash. Not in any privacy sense. It is still digital, and anything digital can and will eventually be hacked at some point. But it's miles better than using my debit card, so I'd always prefer this over my debit card whenever possible. Though if I really want to be anonymous, physical cash is still the way to go. GNU Taler sits somewhere between normal physical cash and debit cards in terms of privacy. I hope it wins.

this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024

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