Share this article

Digital Euro Within Decade 'Very Likely,' Says Finland's Chief Central Banker

Olli Rehn believes a digital euro "in one form or another" is all but inevitable.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 10:10 a.m. Published Oct 16, 2020, 4:24 p.m.

Governor of the Bank of Finland Olli Rehn

Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn told Reuters Friday he believes a digital euro is "very likely" to debut in Europe in the next 10 years.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW

Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters

By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

He was less certain on the European central bank digital currency’s (CBDC) eventual design, saying the European Central Bank (ECB) “will first analyse and experiment.”
A retail digital euro will be “supplementary to" cash; it will not replace it, Rehn said.
Europe’s CBDC specialists want to “work together with the private sector” on a digital euro, he said.
However, Rehn notably rebutted comparisons to the libra stablecoin backed by Facebook. He made clear, though, the ECB will work with the private sector on fitting the project to Europe.
The ECB is expected to decide next steps for the digital euro project in mid-2021.

Finland European Central Bank CBDC CoinFlash Digital Euro

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.