Forbes: Europe Accelerates Building Dollar Stablecoin Alternatives, with Digital Euro and Private Euro Stablecoins Advancing in Parallel

As dollar stablecoins have long dominated the on-chain payment market, Europe is accelerating the development of a digital currency system that reflects its own regulatory framework, monetary sovereignty, and privacy standards, forming two parallel tracks: a "digital euro" and "private euro stablecoins." Among these, the European Central Bank is making privacy protection a key design focus for the digital euro. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone stated that the digital euro will offer the highest possible level of privacy under current technology: offline payments would, in principle, be visible only to the payer and payee, while online transactions would not allow the Eurosystem to directly identify individuals, though banks would still access information required for anti-money laundering. Meanwhile, private players are already moving ahead with euro stablecoins. Revolut has begun rolling out EURR to select users in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, with plans to expand across the entire European Economic Area. EURR runs on Ethereum and is issued by Bridge Building, a Stripe company, targeting a 1:1 peg to the euro. Forbes notes that the digital euro and EURR are not simply substitutes: the former is a public currency issued by the central bank, while the latter is a privately issued on-chain stablecoin. Europe's digital currency landscape is now developing along both models simultaneously, with competition centering on privacy, usability, regulatory clarity, and real economic value.