Digital Euro project backed by ECB shuns US firms for Advisory Panel
The ECB has announced the list of 30-member panel who would be part of the Digital Euro Market Advisory Group and it is to be noted that the ECB has been careful to not include any professional from any of the major US companies.
Many of the US firms that have been involved in crypto and have been backing it over the last few years, like Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal, do not have a presence in this panel which shows the intent of the ECB to ensure that the knowledge and the security behind the digital euro project are paramount and should not be leaked to other countries. Transparency is supposed to be the key for any digital asset but the fact that the ECB has chosen to keep the advisory panel free of any kind of outside influence shows that the ECB considers the project to be of high importance.
The members of the panel are expected to advise the Eurosystem on the design and distribution of the digital euro and the meetings are expected to happen every quarter starting from November 2021 and how the digital Euro system would add value to the financial ecosystem as a whole.
“I am pleased that many high-quality experts from the private sector are willing to contribute to the digital euro project”, said ECB Board Member Fabio Panetta, Chair of the High-Level Task Force. “Their expertise will facilitate the integration of prospective users’ and distributors’ views on a digital euro during the investigation phase.”
It is also expected that it will engage with the public and merchants on a periodic basis to understand their needs and how they would react to the digital euro and what kind of uptake would be there if and when it happens. It is indeed going to be a massive exercise for the ECB and the entire financial community and it will also be something that will be totally different from what was done before. It will be a challenge and with the ECB being solely responsible for its success or failure, it would want to take its time and tread carefully as under no circumstances, would it want to affect the existing financial ecosystem as that would be disastrous for the economy in the long run. It would also need to consider the interaction with countries that do not use digital currencies and that is likely to be a separate and different kind of challenge.
