EU’s march to independence: A scalable blockchain is a must

Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump labeled it an advantage taker and implemented tariffs on EU products, European politicians and policymakers have been scrambling for ways to reduce dependence on America and its companies.

In a TV appearance in early April, ECB President Christine Lagarde underscored the mood in Europe by calling for a “march to independence.” She pointed out how “Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Alipay are all controlled by American or Chinese companies” and that Europe must build alternatives to secure its financial sovereignty.

Lagarde also called for a Capital Markets Union (CMU), saying that unified European capital markets could add value of up to €3 trillion ($3.9 trillion) annually. The CMU is an initiative to integrate Europe’s fragmented capital markets, facilitating the free flow of capital among member states.

The digital euro: a strategic pillar in Europe’s financial autonomy

We can rarely say the European Union has been ahead of the curve regarding cutting-edge technology such as central bank digital currencies and blockchain technology.

The digital euro is almost ready, and the European Central Bank (ECB) accelerated its timeline in March. This digital currency is a key part of Europe’s march to independence and will play a role in unifying its payment systems. Steps like SEPA and TARGET have improved things, but there’s still lots of friction: not all banks offer instant payments, national payment systems still operate alongside EU-wide ones, and as mentioned by Lagarde, the continent is still dependent on foreign payment processors like Visa (NASDAQ: V), Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA), and Alipay.

While the European Payments Initiative has attempted to address this by introducing an EU wallet and card, uptake has been slow. It remains to be seen how the digital euro will be received; current interests show a mix of attitudes ranging from cautious interest to strong privacy concerns.

Using a scalable distributed ledger could help address digital euro concerns

The ECB consultation from 2021 showed that privacy was the top concern for respondents (43%), while a Bundesbank survey from 2024 showed that 75% considered privacy important or very important.

While there’s widespread curiosity and acceptance of the digital euro, privacy concerns will slow adoption. While the ECB has taken a “privacy by design” approach, including making small transactions possible offline, building the digital euro on a scalable public blockchain would do much more to convince skeptics.

Scalable public blockchains like BSV offer the following advantages:

Self-Custody – Users could hold digital euros in multiple non-custodial wallets, meaning they don’t rely on banks or third parties. This limits the ability of governments or financial institutions to freeze, track, or control funds.

Pseudonymity – Users can have multiple wallets with no personal identifiers linked to them until KYC/AML legal requirements make them necessary. Likewise, scalable blockchains capable of nanopayments mean users could theoretically use one wallet per transaction. The sheer scale of millions or billions of small, casual payments would make mass surveillance impossible.

No central control – Finally, public blockchains have no central authority to control them. While all nodes are expected to comply with the Network Access Rules (NAR), nobody can unilaterally stop transactions, freeze wallets, or change the rules of the system. The ECB could run a network node, but it would not be able to control the network.

Some control – Unlike other blockchains like Ethereum, which have been designed to ensure legal systems cannot enforce rules upon them, scalable public blockchains like BSV are designed to ensure nodes can comply with legal orders and that Digital Asset Recovery (DAR) is possible. This balances users’ need for privacy with European governments’ need to comply with KYC/AML regulations and criminal asset seizure rules.

Opinion: BSV is the balance between the extremes

If European leaders are serious about financial sovereignty and independence, scalable public blockchains like BSV are worth a closer look. BSV is capable of one million transactions per second with tiny fees that don’t increase with network demand, making it a suitable backbone for a continent-wide digital currency.

This blockchain’s unique features allow the delicate balance between user privacy and legal compliance to be met. Furthermore, building the digital euro on an open, public network of this kind means it could more easily integrate with a growing number of network applications like wallets, finance apps, games, cybersecurity tools, and more.

So far, public blockchains have failed to scale or strike a balance between the different needs of various parties. BSV is different: it has been designed from the outset to serve as a scalable electronic cash system, and with its recent Teranode upgrade, it’s the most scalable proof-of-work blockchain by far.

Europe’s march to independence does not require proprietary rails. It requires a sovereign currency, usable across the continent, built on existing scalable rails. To lead in digital currency and preserve democratic values, Europe must embrace open infrastructure, not replicate the same closed systems it seeks to escape.

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