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German finance minister Olaf Scholz wants to introduce digital euro

Yahoo! Finance
10/07/2019

Germany's finance minister and vice-chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is in favor of national digital currency.

"Such a payment system would be good for financial center Europe and its integration into the world financial system," Scholz said late last week in a report published by local business news magazine WiWo (WirtschaftsWoche).

"We should not leave the field to China, Russia, the US or any private providers," Scholz added, taking a dig at Libra, the Facebook-led proposed stablecoin.

Just last month, Germany passed a blockchain strategy that prevents any parallel currencies to be issued in the country. At the time, Scholz said: “A core element of state sovereignty is the issuing of a currency, we will not leave this task to private companies.”

The idea of a digital dollar has also been advocated by some lawmakers in the U.S. Last week, Representative French Hill (R-Arkansas) and Rep. Bill Foster (D-Illinois), asked the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, to consider developing a “national digital currency.”

China’s central bank, on the other hand, is “ready” to launch a digital version of its currency yuan later this year or early next year.