These goals and principles should include common requirements vis-à-vis GSC operators before they start their operations, such as clear and proper risk management policies and means, regarding their stabilisation mechanisms, legal certainty of users’ redemption rights and potential claims on underlying reserve assets, and regarding linkages and exposure between their core components and the other entities of the financial system. In addition, there is a need to agree on adequate cross-border oversight principles and schemes between authorities in charge of jurisdictions impacted by the potential circulation of stablecoins. To that end, we could take inspiration and review existing standards and principles for cross-border cooperation in the field of market infrastructures or AML-CFT. - Thirdly, making concrete efforts – including live experimentations – to address weaknesses of the current payment and settlement landscape Adjusting the regulatory and oversight frameworks might not be enough as we have to make sure stablecoins do not become a bad solution to a real problem. Our current financial system  order rests on multiple issuers of settlement assets linked to the anchor settlement asset provided by central banks. In order to preserve the incentives and benefits for innovation, efficiency and stability, central banks as issuers of the reference settlement asset need to revisit and possibly adapt the conditions under which they make that settlement asset available. In that perspective, central banks could, for instance, issue their money in digital form, the so-called concept of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

As intermediaries in exchanges, stablecoins are far less effective than a settlement asset with legal tender status, insofar as (i) they are not entirely stable since their price stability depends on the value of a basket of assets, and (ii) they offer no guarantee of a refund in the event of fraud. The fact that they have no intrinsic value and that they offer no guarantee that they may be converted at par upon demand with commercial bank money or central bank money means that they cannot be used to create reliable stores of value. In addition, as pointed out in the G7 report on stablecoins issued last year, stablecoin schemes are significantly exposed to risks of various nature, including legal, financial, operational and compliance risk concerning money laundering and terrorist financing, competition law, consumer and investor protection. The risks identified must be seriously addressed if stablecoins are not to become the « weak links » undermining the safety of our payment systems. This is all the more important as some of these risks would be amplified and new risks might arise if stablecoins are adopted at a global level. Stablecoins of potentially large size and reach – so-called global stablecoins – may indeed pose additional challenges of system-wide importance both domestically and internationally, for the transmission of monetary policy, as well as for financial stability. They could also have implications for the international monetary system more generally, including currency substitution, and could therefore pose challenges to monetary sovereignty.