Another day and another urgent plea from the European Central Bank to hurry up and embrace the digital euro, citing the geopolitical playground.
ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone, in his recent chat with Spanish outlet El País, says in this era where everything from finance to tech gets weaponized, Europe simply can’t afford to keep handing over its everyday payments to non-European giants.
Cipollone painted the digital euro as nothing less than “public money in digital form.” In other words, it’s cash, but upgraded for the smartphone age.
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Previously European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde called the digital euro CBDC a “symbol of trust in our common destiny.”
With cash usage plummeting from 40% of day-to-day transactions in 2019 to a measly 24% in 2024, the ECB insists it has a duty to keep sovereign money relevant.
Cipollone straight-up warned that the “weaponization of every conceivable tool” makes a fully European-controlled retail payment system non-negotiable.
Instead of more excessive dependencies on overseas providers, he believes in the digital euro, built on homegrown tech and infrastructure, ready to handle all of Europe’s payment needs without begging permission from across the Atlantic.
After all, who wants to watch Europeans’ daily coffee runs depend on foreign servers that could flip the switch if tensions boil over? Right?
But many are not willing to buy the digital euro dream!
Critics keep begging to hit pause, and many crypto experts believe CBDCs like the digital euro go against the very principle of decentralization on which crypto is built.
In fact, industry leaders like Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz believe that CBDCs are a “dystopian” betrayal of crypto’s core.
Meanwhile, in November 2025, South Africa’s Reserve Bank dropped a huge “not yet” on their homegrown CBDC.
