##cius quote : “ the man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life ”. that is why we keep asking. 1 see bis : red book statistics for cpmi countries. 2 see girocard. eu : figures for the first half of 2020. 3 see bis wp 880 : rise of the central bank digital currencies, august 2020. 4 ecb ( 2020 ) : report on a digital euro, frankfurt am main, october 2020. 5 see, for example, bank of thailand / hkma : inthanon - lionrock and mas : project ubin, phase 4 ( cross - border payment versus payment ). 6 see fsb : enhancing cross - border payments : stage 3 roadmap ( october 2020 ). 5 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches

decline in the demand for cash is mentioned. this scenario relates to our core central bank functions, which is one of the main reasons why our colleagues in sweden have been dealing with the topic for quite some time. if payer and payee simply do not want to handle cash anymore, then a pure reliance on private companies for electronic payments could bear risks or could also exclude some parts of society. furthermore, beyond a certain point, such a trend could hamper the provision of adequate cash services. european citizens would thus encounter difficulties in accessing the only means of payment that is provided by the public sector. moreover, the issuance of general purpose cbdc might support the ongoing digitalisation. there is a huge expectation that, in the future, machines or devices will interact fully automatically and autonomously. therefore, a digital euro which could be transferred in real time between two devices – offline and 2 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches embedded in smart contract environments – might be an option as an efficient and generally accepted means of payment supporting those innovative use cases. of course, in a market economy, it ’ s the primary task of private actors to develop innovative payment solutions. these solutions might offer state - of - the - art technology in order to address the needs of the market as regards usability, convenience, speed, cost efficiency and especially programmability, amongst other things. however, payments are a network industry, and, naturally, this could lead to a highly concentrated market. in connection with the inherently commercial interests of private players, this could result in undesirable consequences for consumers. such developments would foster innovation, but could also threaten european financial, economic and, ultimately, political sovereignty – especially if those solutions come from outside of europe, and become widely used for european retail payments. therefore, we have to think about the role of the public and the private sector in the financial ecosystem in general – both of which should, of course, play a part. in addition, there is also the idea that some obstacles to cheaper and faster international payments could be overcome by the issuance of cbdc on the basis of new, and to a certain extent, globally standardised, dlt - based networks. 5 should these developments motivate us to introduce cbdc? in fact, cbdc is one of several non - exclusive options, some of which may be more obvious or easier to implement. but, given the rapid pace of technical progress, we should be able to act