cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/59163

The U.S. and Europe can do better, Chaum believes. He acknowledges that “CBDCs are a big deal” in the world at the moment and is well aware of the fact that many believe CBDCs will be “the end of privacy in money.”

“It’s incredibly ironic for me that something I’ve been working on 40 years ago has become the actual pivotal distinction between the East and West – privacy in payments,” Chaum said.

“It really becomes a choice: are we going to have a kind of protection we are entitled to and that distinguishes us as a human rights-based democracy, or we basically are going to have the same thing as in China,” he added.