© Reuters.
Investing.com – The UK government and the UK have been working for some time to lay the groundwork for the introduction of an e-book. In this context, concerns have regularly been raised that this form of technological advancement could be used to establish a “surveillance state”.
The Economic Secretary to the Department of Finance, Andrew Griffith, told a meeting in Parliament that this was not the government’s intention at all:
“If the UK opts for a retail-focused central bank digital currency, it will be a platform model that will not allow the government to know data about individual transactions.”
According to him, it will ultimately look like the following situation: retail banks will make wallets available to their customers and authorities will only have additional information in the context of the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism. Griffith continues:
“The government takes these concerns very seriously and will develop an approach that will fully address data protection concerns.”
But all this is still only distant future music. According to Griffith, a first case of application of the CBDC will be a central bank clearing system. A function that he says will be performed by stablecoins long before the digital pound is ready for commercialization.
By Marco Oehrl