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Is there social added value in digital currencies?

Testimony on crypto and CBDCs to the Fintech committee of the European Parliament.

Publishing date: 05 December 2022
Authors: Maria Demertzis Catarina Martins

On 29 November 2022, Maria Demertzis and Catarina Martins gave a testimony to the 10th meeting of the Fintech working group in the European Parliament. The presentation was entitled ‘Money at a crossroad: retail CBDCs vs. privately issued crypto-assets’.

About the authors

Maria Demertzis

Maria Demertzis is a Leader at ESF, The Conference Board Europe, former Senior fellow at Bruegel and part-time Professor of Economic Policy at the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute. She was Bruegel’s Deputy Director until December 2022. She has previously worked at the European Commission and the research department of the Dutch Central Bank. She has also held academic positions at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in the USA and the University of Strathclyde in the UK, from where she holds a PhD in economics. She has published extensively in international academic journals and contributed regular policy inputs to both the European Commission's and the Dutch Central Bank's policy outlets. She contributes regularly to national and international press and has regular column that appears twice a month in various EU newspapers and on Bruegel’s opinion page.
Catarina Martins

Catarina worked at Bruegel as a Research analyst until July 2023. She studied her BSc in Economics at the University of Porto. She then pursued an international quantitative MSc in Economics via the QTEM Network, studying the first semester at the University of Porto, the second at HEC Montréal and the third semester at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM).

Before joining Bruegel, Catarina worked at the European Central Bank in the Directorate General Market Operations, the department responsible for the implementation of Monetary Policy. As part of DG-M, Catarina joined the Money Market and Liquidity division, where she worked very closely with topics related to financial markets, benchmark reforms and liquidity developments. She had previously done a quantitative internship in Banco de Portugal at BPLim Microdata Research Laboratory of the Economics and Research department.

Catarina is interested in various areas of economics and financial topics and has developed over time a fascination for data-related work. She is fluent in Portuguese and English and has a good command of Spanish and French.