Millions Question Bank of England’s Claim on Non-Personal Data Sharing in CBDC System, Monero, ZCash, and Dash Set to Profit

• The head of the Bank of England’s CBDC project, Tom Mutton, assures that the proposed digital currency system will maintain users’ data privacy and not share personal information with the government.
• Under the CBDC system, the Bank of England will have access to the history of transactions, but not to the personal information of the individuals involved.

Tom Mutton, the head of the Bank of England’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) project, recently spoke on a podcast with Emily Nicolle, affirming the bank’s commitment to maintain data privacy in its upcoming CBDC system. According to Mutton, the new system will ensure that users’ personal data is not shared with the government or the Bank of England.

Mutton explained that all forms of electronic payments in use today, whether they involve CBDCs or not, possess a degree of transparency. None of these electronic transactions are entirely private or anonymous. He stated,

“All electronic money creates a data footprint. And it’s really a choice of – who do you want to have that data and how do you want them to protect it?”

He further clarified that the anonymity of cash wasn’t a deliberate choice, but rather a byproduct of its physical format. This comparison, he suggested, is not apt when discussing digital currencies. Instead, the focus should be on the fact that over 90% of the money we use today is in electronic form, inherently leaving a data trail.

Detailing the data protection mechanism of the Bank of England’s CBDC system, Mutton explained that while the central bank will have access to the transaction history, it will not know the identity of the individuals involved. He said,

“The private wallet you use will know who the person is but they won’t know what the transactions were.”

This delineation, according to Mutton, stands in contrast to the current financial institutions’ procedures where both sides of a transaction – the individual and the transaction history – are known. Under the proposed CBDC system, the Bank of England would only be aware of the transaction history, not the individual. Simultaneously, the wallet would know the individual but not the transaction history. This approach, he believes, will assure users that the Bank of England is not collecting their personal data.