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Comment by alistairSH | Hacker News Reader

How is the digital euro saved? Is it insured? Does it earn interest?

it's a personal account in the ECB, it's insured by the ECB's digital printer and interest will likely be whatever the ECB decides; it'll need to pick a value that doesn't blow up commercial banks as the article says, and even if does and chooses a very low deposit limit, it'll still cause stress.

> The study, requested by European legislators, was aimed at evaluating the risks that a digital currency, essentially an electronic wallet guaranteed by the ECB, would pose to the banking sector under different scenarios, including a hypothetical "flight to safety".

> it'll need to pick a value that doesn't blow up commercial banks as the article says, and even if does and chooses a very low deposit limit, it'll still cause stress.

or, more likely, everyone in the EU will ignore this "digital euro" nonsense and it will just be another unnecessary waste of taxpayer money.

that's the best case scenario.

How will you ignore it when they outlaw cash?

The EU doesn't have anything close to the police force necessary to enforce a cash ban in the face of public opposition, and doesn't have the money to pay for one.

If there are no ATMs, and no shops accept cash, and they no longer mint Euro currency, what is there to enforce?

This is effectively already the case in parts of Scandinavia.

> This is effectively already the case in parts of Scandinavia

Ironically this isn't quite as consequence-free as some people thought:

"In 2018 a former deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank predicted that by 2025 the country would probably be cashless.

Seven years on, that prediction has turned out to be pretty much true. Just one in 10 purchases are made with cash, and card is the most common form of payment, followed by the Swedish mobile payment system Swish, launched by six banks in 2012 and now ubiquitous. Other mobile phone payment services are also growing quickly.

In fact, according to the central bank’s annual payments report, published this month, Sweden and Norway have the lowest amount of cash in circulation, as a percentage of GDP, in the world.

But in the context of today, with war in Europe, unpredictability in the US and the fear of Russian hybrid attacks almost a part of daily life in Sweden, life without cash is not proving the utopia that perhaps it once promised to be.

Such is the perceived severity of the situation that the authorities are trying to encourage citizens to keep and use cash in the name of civil defence..."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/16/sweden-ca...

Can you elaborate why they would need more police to ban cash?

I really don't understand the hostility here. The digital euro seems like a good way to reduce the power of companies like visa and mastercard, and reduce the fees too. If the government is providing a way to pay freely in a digital way, why would I pay a company to do the same (or worse, see the last scandal between the card companies and steam)?

1. You can easily have a local payments system without creating a new digital currency. So it's not hard to make people wonder, in perfectly good faith, why those two distinct ideas are being bundled right now.

2. Before you portray disagreement as "hostility," please try to keep the site code of conduct in mind.

What makes you think that card comapnies/steam scandal wouldn’t happen with digital euro. EU could easily put some constraints on money usage and they wouldn’t need to justify it to anyone…

And the hostility probably come from experience with EU that makes decisions solely in interest of politicians and corporations instead of EU citizens in my opinion.

I believe the idea is not to provide any interest rate, precisely so people will be inclined to hold their savings in a "regular" bank, and only use the digital euro as a "wallet" with amount limits and no interest, similar to holding the cash yourself.

That is certainly what the banks would prefer to happen; currently people are essentially forced to subsidised banks, as pretty much everyone these days is paid by bank transfer into a current account which likely pays little if any interest.

It's less clear that it would make sense not to pay interest from the ECB's pov.

Good thing about central bank holding it is that you do not need insurance. It cannot fail. All the currency that exist exists there. It is impossible for central bank to fail to fulfil their obligations or they just print more.

Bank failures comes from banks using deposits. Which can result in banks assets to be lower than deposits, say if interest rates have recently rised. Central banks should be instead fully backed.

I see no reason not to have some guide rate being paid... Or in worst case taken away. ECB set the rate to negative at one point... So that might happen again. So rate they pay might end up being negative meaning they charge you...

Paper and coins euro doesn't come with interest, I don't see why digital would. That'd still be the job of a bank.

It’s not “digital cash”, there is no such thing as “digital cash.” It’s an account that a person has with a bank that’s intended for routine transactions, so it’s closer to a checking account than physical cash.

Still doesn't mean you should get interest just for holding digital euros. That sounds like multiplying inflation.

Maybe a specific bank account could provide interest for a specific reason, but the digital currency?

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