Part of Do Not Accumulate, a net.art series of forty-two imagined Central Bank Digital Currencies inscribed on Bitcoin. The Digital Euro is a single, self-contained HTML banknote rebranded as a currency of the European Centralization Authority. Twenty-one editions exist, each programmed to lose value over a 21-month demurrage cycle.
Visual references. Drawn entirely in vector graphics, the bill subverts the design language of the real Euro notes. The architectural windows and bridges of every Euro series open onto a cloud-strewn sky: a navy, scarlet, and pale cloud cluster drifts over a yellow sun. The twelve EU stars, arrayed around the sun in perfect order, double as the twelve positions of a clock face, turning relentlessly forward while the clouds drift against them and inevitably dissolve into the cycle’s programmed decay. The honeycomb security pattern returns as a translucent ground.
The top-left EU flag carries an additional ellipse, an ever-watchful eye reviewing every transaction, its senders and recipients. The large central numeral serves as a remaining-value indicator, echoed by a small mirror at the lower-left. Along the right margin, a CB DC wordmark presides over a colour-coded status bar, dashes lit in sequence from grey through yellow and orange to red, an urgency meter designed to make the holder “participate” in the economy before the balance loses another unit. Beneath it, a discreet D€ 20/21 mark denotes the artwork edition.
The left margin stacks vertical labels of “European Central Bank” in the languages of the Eurosystem (BCE, EBC, EKB, ESB, EKT, EKP, EZB, ЕЦБ, ECB), a silent chorus of witnesses. DIGITAL EURO runs in three scripts at the centre: Latin, Greek (EYPΩ), and Cyrillic (ЕВРО), and a discreet 2025 MLO.art watermark anchors the lower-left corner.
The propaganda machine. As each edition advances through its cycle, the bill becomes its own propaganda machine. System warnings, adjustment notices, and demurrage countdowns appear on the note, selling the controls they impose. The recurring lines shift in tone across the cycle, from “Physical currency is being retired to provide a faster, safer, and more inclusive payment experience” in the early months to “Accounts may be placed in a temporary review state to protect network integrity” later on. Surveillance, spending limits, and the erosion of privacy are recast as features and convenience.
Architecture. The work lives on Bitcoin as a recursive ordinal. A four-layer architecture (a shared artist layer, shared assets, the Digital Euro currency layer, and twenty-one individual edition inscriptions) reconstitutes each note on demand, fully on-chain, with no external dependencies.
Cornerstone editions (1 and 21) are inscribed on rare satoshis whose blocks were mined on real EU CBDC policy milestone dates: the ECB’s introduction of negative interest rates (2014), the European Council’s adoption of eIDAS 2.0 (2024), and the closing of the ECB’s preparation phase (2025). The substrate carries the policy timeline alongside its imagined consequences. The title encodes the rule: D.N.A. spells Do Not Accumulate, and demurrage is its inner code. A permanent medium records a currency built to expire.
A note on 21. The recurring number is not incidental. Twenty-one editions per currency, twenty-one value states, twenty-one months in each cycle: each is a small mirror of Bitcoin’s own hard cap of twenty-one million coins, the constant that anchors an entire monetary system to code rather than to policy. The choice of substrate follows from the same logic. In a work about a currency that can be expired, restricted, surveilled, and shaped from above, only an open, permissionless, censorship-resistant ledger can hold the critique honestly. The artwork lives on Bitcoin because Bitcoin is the only medium that cannot be edited, revoked, or programmed to forget.
Acknowledgement. With sincere thanks to Proper and Steven Reiss from Ancora for their guidance and patience in helping me inscribe, hunt, and split satoshis on my own. Working directly on Bitcoin, rather than through a service, was essential to the integrity of Do Not Accumulate: the same hands that make the artwork should be the ones placing it on the chain.
