Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, have more potential for privacy than their private sector counterparts, according to economists at University of California, Santa Barbara and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The findings were published in a recent paper, entitled “Monetizing Privacy,” written by Rod Garratt, Professor of Economics at UCSB, and Michael Lee, an economist at the NY Fed; it’s the subject of a new blog post published today, which synthesizes the paper’s findings.
Digital currencies proposed by big tech companies aren’t a great option, according to Garratt and Lee, since the business interests of those companies are fundamentally at odds with promoting privacy; selling data collected during payment transactions (to a company like Cambridge Analytica) is great for companies trying to make a buck, and bad for users who don’t want their data scrutinized by large corporations.
Read more: https://decrypt.co/49247/ny-fed-cbdcs-privacy-big-tech-digital-currency