Quick thread on #digitalyuan privacy issues: privacy protections from merchants, tech, etc. look quite good (from gov is diff story). In US, you give all credit card credentials to anyone you pay, trusting they won't keep charging you or lose/sell credentials 1/n

2/n These in US are "pull payments," you auth someone to pull money from your acct. Privacy & security in US w/these *has* gotten better with Apply pay and chip cards that encrypt info to protect your identity and card info. eCNY is different, allowing you to "push" payments

3/n push payments like in eCNY can be less convenient, but they can give consumers more control over how much and when charged, and system can ensure your identity and sensitive data are NOT shared with merchants, better protecting privacy

4/n What about government? Financial privacy from gov is weak globally b/c of anti-money laundering, but gov controlling centralized ledger is privacy nightmare. eCNY can get some privacy by registering wallet only w/phone num, and PBOC doesn't know name associated w/number.

5/n Of course, any AML investigation or crime could easily force the telcos to hand over the identity data to authorities, but that's true today for any online payment method in China, or abroad. Naturally legal protections in China are less, shall we say, robust though...

6/6 to conclude, #digitalyuan reflects its context in China, with more privacy from and controls on private sector (this is real and in some sense good!) but less from government. It's a mixed bag but absolutely worth studying technically how the protections in there work or not

If you want a deep dive into these and other issues with #digitalyuan #ecny, especially whether it can take on the dollar (probs not) you can read my testimony to US-China Econ and Security Review Commission here: https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/chorzempa-testimony-2021-04-15.pdf