Charles Hoskinson used a UN-adjacent stage in New York this week to warn that the European Central Bank's digital euro project could turn into what he called a "financial panopticon" — a system capable of watching and blocking individual payments. Speaking on October 2 at the Future of Money, Governance & the Law Summit, hosted by the Government Blockchain Association at UN headquarters, the Cardano founder said a digital euro could enable "asset and transaction discrimination" and predicted that within a decade it could decline transactions based on spending caps. His example: being blocked from buying fuel after already purchasing 50 liters in a month.
The timing of the warning is pointed. The third round of trilogue negotiations on the digital euro broke up on September 30 with no deal on merchant fees or holding limits — the caps on individual balances. That followed a July 9 vote in the European Parliament, which approved opening those talks by 416 to 169. The European Commission's 2023 proposal states the digital euro should not be programmable money, and then-ECB board member Fabio Panetta told lawmakers that year the bank would never limit where, when, or to whom people pay. None of those safeguards are binding.
The gap between promises and law
That's the crux of Hoskinson's argument. Verbal assurances from central bankers and a non-binding line in a Commission proposal don't constrain a future ECB, or any future ECB leadership. Only legislation that explicitly prohibits programmable spending rules would, he said. The current framework doesn't have it. The ECB still plans a 12-month pilot starting in late 2027, with possible issuance in 2029 — a timeline that gives lawmakers roughly a year to nail down the rules before testing begins.
Europe isn't the only jurisdiction wrestling with this. The US Senate has passed a temporary CBDC ban running through 2030, a starkly different approach that effectively freezes federal digital-dollar work while Congress debates the terms. The contrast is likely to feature in any future trilogue discussion about what "safeguards" actually mean.
Midnight as the counter-pitch
Hoskinson didn't just criticize. He pitched Midnight, his privacy-focused network, as an alternative architecture — one where transaction rules aren't set by a central issuer. Whether that resonates with EU policymakers is another matter; the digital euro project has been driven by a desire for European payment sovereignty, not private-chain alternatives. Still, the pitch gives Hoskinson a concrete product to point to as the debate moves forward.
AI agents get their own panel
On the same day as Hoskinson's talk, BeInCrypto Global Head of News Brian McGleenon led a summit panel on AI outpacing financial regulation, with experts from the IRS, Mastercard, and the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund debating who controls money-moving AI agents. The session also launched joint BeInCrypto Research and GBA research on AI, blockchain, and quantum computing in finance, with final findings due in January 2027. It's a reminder that the programmable-money debate isn't happening in isolation — AI agents capable of initiating payments raise similar questions about who gets to set the rules and who can override them.
For now, the digital euro's path runs through trilogue, where merchant fees and holding limits remain unresolved. The next round hasn't been scheduled. Until it is, the safeguards Hoskinson wants remain exactly where they've been: on paper, unenforceable, and one ECB leadership change away from being renegotiated.
