Government say they need their CBDC to be transparent. That is to say, so that they can trace and follow crime on their new cash system. I don't have a problem with that so long as every citizen's privacy is maintained.
But this is not the total extent of what transparency needs to be, if, government wants to make a CBDC work.
For a CBDC to work fully, for both that nation and all its citizens, transparency needs to be in totality. What exactly do I mean by this?
Government, having been misled by fintech for more than 5 years now, and having failed to deliver on certain promises in 2019 using crippled crypto protocols, no longer believe a CBDC can be done on chain. But do they know it all? For there is a blockchain (DL) protocol that has always been able to deliver. And fintech have deliberately hidden it from view.
But its not about "my protocol is better than your protocol". It is about private blockchains which are what fintech has filed to deliver on for so long, which can never deliver the total transparency required to make a CBDC work for everyone. Because a private CBDC network means government cannot be held to account, only citizens and by government! Its a one way deal which will not garner the trust required to make a CBDC adoptable by the people.
Don't get me wrong, I am not anti government nor anti bank. I am just pointing this out because I want a CBDC to work. So what do I propose?
Take a deep breath please everyone, for is going to be hard to hear - for a CBDC to work it must provide total transparency and to do that it must be run on a public blockchain in the clear for all.
There cannot be more than one blockchain infrastructure. But a CBDC could already run tokenised as a layer on top of the current Bitcoin network and retain total transparency.
Worried about a single public blockchain? Why! The Internet is an identical Old Guard here.
A single public blockchain infrastructure is the only way a CBDC will work because of trust. It's the only way government will be able to convince the people it is trustworthy. This is not simply a technical challenge already solved anyway.
It is a trust opportunity.
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