Similar statements might become frequent in the nearest future. Right after the Chinese president talking very positively about blockchain and the Chinese Government issuing its official standpoint on DCEP (Chinese Digital Currency/Electronic Payment System), there’s been a flood of ideas to have national digital currencies. On Wednesday, 30 October, one of these ideas came from Germany.

Bankenverband (an association of over 200 German banks) issued an official document declaring that, if the eurozone is to maintain its position in the financial world, it must start to act. The statement said the eurozone would significantly profit from “programmable digital euro”.

The Association of German Banks agreed that all the central banks of the European Union member states should work together if such step is to be taken. This, however, could be a problem since a general consensus should be reached on most issues, which would be extremely difficult in the case of cryptocurrencies (even though we are talking about digital euro).

The document also says that, although digital euro and digital currencies on the whole are rising, all security measures used so far should be maintained in their case, too. These include mainly KYC (know-your-customer) and AML (anti-money-laundering). Naturally, the goal is to combat criminality and illegal activities that are often used as an argument by crypto critics.

It's no secret that Germany and France are the largest critics of Libra, so it was only a question of time when they would come up with an idea to compete with Facebook’s cryptocurrency. The Bankenverband promised to help with the development of digital euro and to support it, which is predictive of the digital euro becoming a success.