Transparent Money · English

Transparent Money

A privacy-preserving architecture for real-time public spending transparency.

Transparent Money proposes a public information layer where each digital cent receives a tracking number. This makes it possible to follow the movement of money through the economy without publishing the identity of private citizens or companies. The objective is simple: make public money visible while keeping private life protected.

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What is Transparent Money?

Transparent Money is not a new currency, not a central bank digital currency, and not a payment system. It is a proposed public, structured, privacy-preserving information layer built around existing money and existing banking infrastructure.

Its central idea is that money can be traced without tracing people. If each digital cent has a tracking number, then the movement of money can be recorded by following the money itself rather than by publishing the names of payer and payee.

The logic of Transparent Money

1. If each digital cent has a tracking number, money itself has identity.
2. Because money itself has identity, a record of monetary movement does not need the identity of the payer and payee.
3. Because payer and payee identity is not needed in that record, it can be made public.
4. Public money can carry higher detail; private transactions can remain generic.
5. Where inference risks remain, reissuance pools can break the continuity of private possession.
6. Therefore, public money becomes visible while private life remains protected.

Why it matters

Public spending is often delayed, fragmented, technical, and difficult for ordinary citizens to understand. Transparent Money aims to transform fiscal transparency from occasional disclosure into continuous visibility. Citizens, journalists, researchers, businesses, and policymakers could see how public money is collected, transferred, and spent in real time.

The wider benefit is economic. A public, privacy-preserving map of money flows could improve public accountability, reduce waste and corruption, weaken insider information advantages, and give citizens and businesses better information for decision-making.

Privacy by architecture

Transparent Money is designed to avoid turning transparency into surveillance. Private identities are not published in the public ledger. Private transactions use generic codes and broad descriptors, while public transactions carry higher detail because they involve public money.

Additional protections can include splitting unusual amounts into common denominations, coarsening time and location, generalising private transaction categories, and using short-term reissuance pools to prevent one party from following another party’s money path.

Author

Transparent Money is a research and public-good concept developed by Dr Gonzalo Garcia-Atance Fatjo.

This website will link to publications, preprints, conference papers, videos, and related work as the project develops.