a a weber ( 2010 ), der iwf spielt mit dem feuer ( the imf is playing with fire ), financial times deutschland, 25 february, 2010 ( available in german only ). see c walsh ( 2010 ), the future of inflation targeting, university of california, santa cruz, mimeo. see deutsche bundesbank, price - level targeting as a monetary policy strategy, monthly report, january 2010, pp 31 – 45 ; c gerberding, r gerke and f hammermann ( 2010 ), price - level targeting when there is pricelevel drift, deutsche bundesbank research centre, discussion paper, series 1, no 23 / 2010. bis central bankers ’ speeches of unconventional measures during the crisis give no cause for viewing the lower bound of the interest rate as a binding restriction on the effectiveness of monetary policy. 3. particular lessons for monetary policy in the euro area all the issues i have been talking about up to now concern more or less all central banks and every monetary policymaker. for the remainder of my speech, i would like to focus on the particular challenges for monetary policy in the euro area. these arise from the sovereign debt crisis, which is the major challenge for economic and monetary union. the circumstances surrounding the debt crisis are aggravating the conduct of the eurosystem ’ s common monetary policy, which is geared towards maintaining price stability in the euro area as a whole. 3. 1 heterogeneity as a challenge for monetary policy one of the aggravating factors is heterogeneity in terms of growth, inflation and competitiveness. with regard to the euro - area countries ’ economic performance, we are currently observing a widening divergence. broadly speaking, there is a considerable growth gap between the core and the periphery, or to put it more precisely, some peripheral countries of the euro area. in my view, the economic heterogeneity of the euro area is a non - issue. why should heterogeneity be a problem for the single monetary policy? after all, the dispersion of growth rates, as measured by the weighted standard deviations of quarterly growth rates, is not significantly greater than in the first years of emu. with regard to inflation variance, we see even lower values than then. furthermore, the us economy is characterised by considerable heterogeneity, too, and that does not impede the federal reserve ’ s monetary policy, either. and

, as they are also called, are essentially crowdfunding tools which finance projects by pre - selling digital tokens, in exchange for legal tender, to interested investors. it is also important to ensure that the existing anti - money laundering provisions are upheld and to prevent crypto tokens from being used to finance terrorism, hence the ongoing revision of the eu anti - money laundering directive with a view to ensuring that currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers apply the same customer due diligence standards as other financial institutions. that is also the reason why the acting federal finance minister and i, together with our french counterparts, have proposed that the argentinian presidency of the g20 add this topic to the g20 agenda. seeing as transactions of this kind are offered worldwide, there ’ s only so much that a national or european regime can achieve. potential financial stability risks might also merit regulatory intervention, which is why we need to keep track of the use of crypto tokens in the financial sector. as things stand, the risks are still limited, but that ’ s not to say that things might change if banks begin to invest more in crypto tokens, investors recklessly speculate on digital tokens, or crypto exchanges start granting liquidity facilities. banks would therefore have to set aside sufficient capital to cover these exposures. given how risky they are, the capital requirements would undoubtedly be considerable. we ’ re also a long way from a situation where crypto tokens influence the monetary policy transmission process. one look at their value tells us that they are still a niche phenomenon – yesterday, the value of every single crypto token worldwide came to roughly us $ 420 billion. that might sound a lot, but compared to a global money supply of us $ 87, 000 billion, it ’ s not much. so there ’ s no need for monetary policymakers to fret about policy effectiveness just yet. agustin carstens, general manager of the bank for international settlements ( bis ), speaking here in frankfurt last week, described bitcoin as “ a combination of a bubble, a ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster ". while i wouldn ’ t go that far, i do not see crypto tokens as a compelling alternative to legal tender. central banks mandated to preserve price stability and effective banking regulations are what we need for a stable monetary and financial system, not crypto tokens. and we ’ ve got both those things in the euro area. 3.