BoE official says public needs digital pound and privacy reassurance

A BoE official says the public needs to know more about the digital pound and privacy.

Sarah Breeden, the next deputy governor of the Bank of England, said on Tuesday that there needs to be a "national conversation" about people's fears that a digital version of the pound would let the government spy on them.

The Bank of England (BoE) and Britain's Finance Ministry (Finance Ministry) have been discussing whether and how to make the pound digital, likely in the second half of this decade.

But people who don't like the idea say that the government could use digital currency to keep track of what people buy with their money and make it harder to pay for things with cash.

Policymakers in the European Union have already tried to convince people that a digital euro is not a "Big Brother" surveillance project.

"I think that's why we need to start a national conversation," Breeden said at a hearing in parliament's Treasury Select Committee about her appointment. "Even though I support that technology, it was clear from the responses to the discussion paper that people are worried about privacy."

She said a digital pound would be the base for all money in the digital world, ensuring people could trust money.

"So, from a logical point of view, it's the right thing to do. "I think the debate on how to handle privacy issues and the role of the government is just getting started," Breeden said.

She told lawmakers, "The privacy concerns about programmability are real, and we need to reassure the public about how privacy will be delivered, with terms and conditions set in law. We cannot assume trust in practice."

Breeden, an executive director at the BoE, said privacy should be just as crucial for private-sector digital currencies as it is for public ones.

Eleven countries have already released digital versions of their currencies, and the U.S. Federal Reserve is considering doing the same thing.

Breeden also said that she was worried about how it would affect the economy. She said that the answers to the public consultation will be made public by the end of the year and that critics of digital currency were wrong when they said that it would make cash hard to get.