Group items tagged

The European Commission will provide a prototype of a EU Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI) as set out in the proposed European Digital Identity Regulation. The proposal aims to enable European citizens and businesses to share identity data in a secure and convenient way. The prototype wallet serves to trial and inform the specifications developed by Member States, as the common EU Toolbox to implement the EUDI. It will be tested in a number of large scale pilots that cover different sectors and will be made available for re-use by contributors as open source. Meanwhile the Brownstone Institute points to some of the EUDI's significant ethical and surveillance concerns that should be extensively discussed and debated by the public.

"Freedom House rates people's access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report. Individual freedoms-ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law-can be affected by state or nonstate actors."

I've looked for cross-country comparisons of residents' trust in government, and so far this OECD metric is the best I've found, and the range is quite significant from Switzerland at the very trusting end (84% responding "yes" to the question of confidence in the government) to 31% from Americans, which could explain their tendency to be anti-CBDC.

"If DeFi wants to attract Main Street users, an odd mix of more secrecy and less secrecy is required. Secrecy is important to businesses and individuals. They don't want their information to be naked for all to see. But Main Street doesn't want complete anonymity. It wants to use DeFi tools that strip away just enough secrets to assure that dirty money is being excluded."

A BIS paper proposed a data governance system that restores control to the parties generating the data, by requiring consent prior to their use by service providers. The system should be open, with consent that is revocable, granular, auditable, and with notice in a secure environment. Conditions also include purpose and use limitation, data minimization, and retention restriction. Trust in the system and widespread adoption are enhanced by mandating specialized data fiduciaries. The experience with India's Data Empowerment Protection Architecture (DEPA) suggests that such a system can operate at scale with low transaction costs.

The RBI has said the central bank digital currency (CBDC) will remain anonymous and regulations that are applicable to paper currency will prevail on the e-rupee. RBI deputy-governor T. Rabi Sankar said the central bank was looking at solutions to make CBDC at par with paper currency when it comes to having the key feature of anonymity which has ensured that cash is still used in the developed world. ``The challenge is to ensure the anonymity because the normal understanding is that anything digital leaves a footprint. This can have various solutions," Sankar said. The RBI is looking at a technological solution and also a legal solution to help assuage the concerns on this problem. Sankar said the start-up or the fintech ecosystem would have to innovate and launch various use cases for the new currency. RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said the rules governing deposits and withdrawal of paper cash will also apply to digital currency.

A draft law dedicated to the digital ruble has reportedly been filed in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. The law introduces rules to determine how the new form of national decree will be issued and amends a series of legal acts to facilitate its implementation. The "Currency Regulation and Currency Control" law will be amended to secure the digital ruble's legal tender status, and changes to the federal law on "Personal Data" will allow the central bank to tap into personal information without asking for consent.

Chairman Jerome Powell, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on March 7, 2024, said the U.S. Federal Reserve was "nowhere near" issuing a CBDC. He added that it has no interest in establishing accounts for individuals that would compete with the banking system, and it would not support any Fed monitoring of personal financial transactions.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper that, based on a representative survey of about 1,300 US consumers, found that women are less willing than men to share their financial transaction data in exchange for better offers on financial services. Differences in attitudes across groups, such as the willingness to take financial risks, concerns that data will become publicly available and concerns around personal safety, explain part of these gaps. The analysis also shows that older individuals are also less willing to share their data, perhaps as a matter of principle. This could result in biased samples and outcomes that are not in the interest of the underrepresented groups, e.g. in lending decisions, financial advice, and health applications.

PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, which previously had only been available on Ethereum, has been deployed on Solana which offers "confidential transfers" as an optional feature. When enabled, it would allow merchants to provide confidentiality for transaction amounts to their consumers while maintaining visibility for regulatory purposes. According to PayPal, it chose the Solana blockchain for its high speeds with extremely low costs. https://solana.com/news/pyusd-paypal-solana-developer https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2024-05-29-PayPal-USD-Stablecoin-Now-Available-on-Solana-Blockchain,-Providing-Faster,-Cheaper-Transactions-for-Consumers