In June, the Bank of Canada (BoC) concluded six weeks of online public consultations about issuing a digital Canadian dollar, an idea that has gained increasing prominence along with the rise of cryptocurrencies. Last Wednesday, the results of those consultations were published, along with the central bank's report on the matter, and they are pretty revealing.

Almost 90,000 Canadians participated in the online survey. While keeping in mind that participation is not representative of the Canadian population and that nearly all who answered had heard about the idea of a digital Canadian dollar, the results were clear: privacy matters, and there is a major distrust of institutions with respect to how they handle private data.