ECB: How the digital euro redistributes power

2028: I purchase chocolate not intended for me. My aunt makes a booking that was never meant for her. The wine I drink is charged to my neighbour’s account, since I had already exceeded my digital spending limit in June.

This is how I envision life under the digital euro. A courteous form of disenfranchisement and an instrument of totalitarian control. With it, the ECB equips itself with a mechanism of self-preservation, cementing its continued existence under immunity from criticism, secured by an absolute monopoly on power. The central bank becomes what democracies are meant to forbid. Untouchable.

The digital euro at the center of a new architecture of power.

The ECB’s Objective: Securing Its Own Relevance

Within sealed-off chambers, the ECB makes decisions that trigger the devaluation of money, overheat the real estate market and destabilize pension systems. Few institutions are subject to such sustained criticism, and rightly so. Yet with the digital euro, Europe entrenches its dependence on a central bank whose democratic oversight is at best symbolic and whose measures harm millions of lives. This is the actual agenda. It will only become visible once cash has disappeared.

Why a Private Blockchain and Not a Public One

It is no coincidence that the ECB relies on a centralized pseudo-blockchain for the digital euro. Blockchain evokes innovation, freedom and security. Precisely why the term is used so deliberately. Technically, it is a digital ledger that grants the ECB full and unrestricted access at all times.

Unlike the Bitcoin blockchain, which is immutable and public, the digital euro brings Europe one step closer to the transparent citizen. It entails centralized control with a built-in capacity for deletion and modification.

The architecture of the future.

The centralized blockchain serves no technical purpose. It follows a strategic calculus: control, steerability, political insulation. It grants the ECB full sovereignty over every transaction’s timing, amount and recipient. A decentralized solution would be feasible. Precisely that is undesirable. An open system cannot be frozen, cannot be retroactively traced, cannot be selectively erased.

There is no need for a dictatorship when one controls the flow of payments.

Europe debates data protection while simultaneously constructing a system that records every transaction, every preference, every deviation.

2028: You want to travel from Cologne to Hamburg. The train ticket purchase fails. The fuel pump at the station won’t release. Your CO₂ account has been depleted by your recent flight to Barcelona.

Digital obedience could be enforced with ease. The centralized blockchain creates an infrastructure that permits absolute arbitrariness. Those receiving state support might be restricted to predefined baskets of goods. Chocolate and alcohol excluded. The politically noncompliant may face delays in payment processing. Suddenly a transfer takes 48 days instead of 3 seconds. A flight abroad, under ecological considerations, might be permitted only once every five years.

Bitcoin is a programmatic code against power. The digital euro is a programmatic code for power. Those who fail to see the difference have not understood the future of money.

Those who claim they have nothing to hide have not understood the question.

The central bank promises the digital euro will be as anonymous as cash. Anyone who believes that likely also believed the euro would preserve purchasing power and guarantee price stability.

This is not about the right to conceal. It is about the right not to be perpetually surveilled. And about the final bastion of individual autonomy. The freedom to dispose of one’s own money.

A hack? Realistic—and catastrophic.

In centrally administered systems like the digital euro, a single flaw can trigger widespread consequences. A hack is far from implausible. Those who act with skill will siphon off funds without ever being noticed.

By comparison, Bitcoin is maintained globally by around 15,000 independent computers. To manipulate Bitcoin, more than half of these nodes would need to be compromised simultaneously. This is a technically formidable task and, for all practical purposes, virtually impossible.

Whoever holds key access to the ECB’s private blockchain controls the system. They can generate transactions, delete them, backdate them. Shift balances, freeze accounts, erase them. And no one can verify it. Only the ECB has access.

Since independent auditing is impossible, the suspicion is obvious. Anyone with access, or who gains it, can reallocate funds at will. Counterfeit money will no longer require a forger’s workshop. Money laundering no longer needs a network of shell companies. Only a login.

A financial system no longer in service, but in command.

Instead of limiting power, Europe places its trust in a promise.

The digital euro is not Europe’s answer to Bitcoin. It is the expression of a desire to extend control over people. Why, then, does Europe rely on a promise when a technical safeguard would be entirely possible?