The European Central Bank's digital euro program took an important step on Wednesday, allowing it to enter the "investigation phase", which could eventually lead to the landing of the digital euro around the middle of 2021-2030.
The ECB said in a statement that this phase would last for 24 months and was designed to address key design and distribution issues.
The ECB also said, "the future decision on whether to release the digital euro will not be judged in advance, the decision will only be made at a later date." In any case, the digital euro will supplement rather than replace cash. "
ECB President Christine Lagarde has been enthusiastic about the central bank's digital currency. The ECB had previously warned that failure to introduce a central bank digital currency would undermine EU monetary autonomy as payment service providers such as foreign technology giants would occupy the sector.
As research and official comments depict a fast, easy-to-use and secure payment system, the potential features of the digital euro have emerged. For Ms Lagarde, who is critical of encrypted assets, it is crucial that the central bank's digital currency will become an alternative to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
"it has been nine months since we released the Digital Euro report. At that time, we conducted further analysis, consulted the public and professionals, and conducted some experiments, and the results were encouraging, "Lagarde said in a statement. "all this led to our decision to speed up and launch the digital euro project."
The ECB said experiments so far had shown that the core infrastructure of the digital euro would be environmentally friendly and that power consumption would be "negligible" compared to encrypted assets such as bitcoin.