Today the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and BIS Innovation Hub published a paper on Project Tourbillon, which explores privacy for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC). The solution enables anonymous payments at scale.
Privacy is one of the potential blockers to the adoption of retail CBDCs. There are two aspects to the concern. One is that the government can see precisely how you spend money. The other is that a government could prevent access to digital money.
We believe solutions such as Tourbillon are significantly superior to others in protecting details about transactions in a cash-like manner. However, regarding the second point, all digital mechanisms will allow central banks to limit access. That applies equally to Canadian truckers and their bank accounts and Tourbillon style CBDCs. That doesn’t make this a bad solution, it’s just something to bear in mind.
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