Questões de Concurso

Text CB1A2 

        Currently, the Digital Euro has not been launched — though there are signs that a launch may be coming sooner rather than later. By October 2025, the ECB (European Central Bank) has indicated a second phase of the preparation for the Digital Euro. By then, the ECB will have prepared an outreach plan, procurement standards, and technology providers.

        The Digital Euro has potential downsides, many of them echoed in the other launches of central bank digital currencies. For example, the central bank will become a technology company focused on procurement with central points of failure. This was a breeding ground for corruption for the bureaucrat fortunate enough to make these technical choices in China.

        While the Digital Euro is slated to “coexist” with cash, this also comes when EU (European Union) nations are voting on ending end-to-end encryption (a critical digital privacy tool) and have started to restrict cash with limits being placed on how much you can spend in cash to accelerate its slow demise.

        User privacy is said to be the ECB’s “chief concern” as it has been designing the central bank’s digital currency. Certainly, the ECB is aware of public perception that has negative surveillance, control, and privacy implications in mind. The ECB has been at pains to say that the Digital Euro will “coexist” with cash and that unlike the e-CNY (China’s central bank digital coin) it will not be tied to a “social credit” score or place limits on how money is spent.

        A big part of the ECB’s drive towards the Digital Euro is to compete and pry Europeans away from Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and “stablecoins”.

        Central bank digital currencies are a direct liability of the central bank. Since the central bank has the power to issue currency, this means that the central bank can essentially create “digital euros” if it wishes to. The architecture and data within a central bank digital currency are usually built completely by the central bank supported by private vendors of its choice. In China, the central bank has turned away from a distributed ledger technology to a centralized data store, in which the technical details are pretty scant. Hence, the central bank controls everything, and the system has no external access. 

Internet: <www.forbes.com/sites> (adapted).

Text CB1A2 

        Currently, the Digital Euro has not been launched — though there are signs that a launch may be coming sooner rather than later. By October 2025, the ECB (European Central Bank) has indicated a second phase of the preparation for the Digital Euro. By then, the ECB will have prepared an outreach plan, procurement standards, and technology providers.

        The Digital Euro has potential downsides, many of them echoed in the other launches of central bank digital currencies. For example, the central bank will become a technology company focused on procurement with central points of failure. This was a breeding ground for corruption for the bureaucrat fortunate enough to make these technical choices in China.

        While the Digital Euro is slated to “coexist” with cash, this also comes when EU (European Union) nations are voting on ending end-to-end encryption (a critical digital privacy tool) and have started to restrict cash with limits being placed on how much you can spend in cash to accelerate its slow demise.

        User privacy is said to be the ECB’s “chief concern” as it has been designing the central bank’s digital currency. Certainly, the ECB is aware of public perception that has negative surveillance, control, and privacy implications in mind. The ECB has been at pains to say that the Digital Euro will “coexist” with cash and that unlike the e-CNY (China’s central bank digital coin) it will not be tied to a “social credit” score or place limits on how money is spent.

        A big part of the ECB’s drive towards the Digital Euro is to compete and pry Europeans away from Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and “stablecoins”.

        Central bank digital currencies are a direct liability of the central bank. Since the central bank has the power to issue currency, this means that the central bank can essentially create “digital euros” if it wishes to. The architecture and data within a central bank digital currency are usually built completely by the central bank supported by private vendors of its choice. In China, the central bank has turned away from a distributed ledger technology to a centralized data store, in which the technical details are pretty scant. Hence, the central bank controls everything, and the system has no external access. 

Internet: <www.forbes.com/sites> (adapted).

O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder à questão.

Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land

Lakes and connecting streams in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, June 2014.

Four days before President Joe Biden is set to leave office, his administration recommended that about 3 million more acres in Alaska's western Arctic be protected from development and issued a guideline, effective immediately, requiring additional protections for traditional Native subsistence harvests of fish, caribou and other resources.

The new recommendations and guidance, which apply to the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, run counter to President-elect Donald Trump's expressed plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and elsewhere and to overturn Biden administration environmental policies more broadly.

The recommendations for additional land to be protected as part of what are termed "special areas" and the guidance for elevating the importance of subsistence and tribal consultation could be ignored or scrapped by the incoming Trump administration.

The northeastern part of the reserve is the area considered most likely to hold oil and where development has spread in recent years. There is already production in that area, and the most notable production expected in the future is from ConocoPhillips' Willow project. Willow won Biden administration approval in 2023. Production is expected to start by the end of the decade and peak at 180,000 barrels per day; current production from all North Slope fields amounts to less than 470,000 barrels per day.

Like the existing Teshekpuk special area, which holds important habitat for caribou, fish and migratory birds, the village of Nuiqsut is in the general area of the reserve's northeastern corner, where new oil development has occurred. Nuiqsut is so close that oilfield infrastructure can be seen from the village.

Pipelines extend across the landscape outside Nuiqsut, Alaska, May 2019.

"But at the same time, I think we and our partners have also made it abundantly clear that we're going to keep fighting, and keep fighting for protections in the Western Arctic," she said.

(From ROSEN, Yereth. Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land, Alaska Beacon, January 17, 2025. In alaskabeacon.com/2025/01/17/biden-administration-in-its-last-days-pro poses-new-protections-for-arctic-alaska-land/, accessed on February 19th, 2025)

O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder à questão.

Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land

Lakes and connecting streams in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, June 2014.

Four days before President Joe Biden is set to leave office, his administration recommended that about 3 million more acres in Alaska's western Arctic be protected from development and issued a guideline, effective immediately, requiring additional protections for traditional Native subsistence harvests of fish, caribou and other resources.

The new recommendations and guidance, which apply to the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, run counter to President-elect Donald Trump's expressed plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and elsewhere and to overturn Biden administration environmental policies more broadly.

The recommendations for additional land to be protected as part of what are termed "special areas" and the guidance for elevating the importance of subsistence and tribal consultation could be ignored or scrapped by the incoming Trump administration.

The northeastern part of the reserve is the area considered most likely to hold oil and where development has spread in recent years. There is already production in that area, and the most notable production expected in the future is from ConocoPhillips' Willow project. Willow won Biden administration approval in 2023. Production is expected to start by the end of the decade and peak at 180,000 barrels per day; current production from all North Slope fields amounts to less than 470,000 barrels per day.

Like the existing Teshekpuk special area, which holds important habitat for caribou, fish and migratory birds, the village of Nuiqsut is in the general area of the reserve's northeastern corner, where new oil development has occurred. Nuiqsut is so close that oilfield infrastructure can be seen from the village.