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. 2 – what role for regulatory and oversight authorities? in this context, it is first and foremost the responsibility of the private sector to design stablecoin schemes that do not bring undue risks to our payment systems. for that purpose, regulatory and oversight authorities have an important role to play in order to ensure that the risk management requirements to be met are clear, comprehensive and complied with, while preserving the potential for technological innovation offered by crypto - assets. to that end, they should in my view focus on three main tasks : - firstly, working on a regulatory response that preserves the positive potential impact stablecoins might have on the efficiency of our payment systems. given the rapid pace of innovation, which is also characteristic of stablecoin initiatives, this pleads for developing an agile, pragmatic and proportionate regulatory response rather than setting up an ad - hoc, unique and comprehensive framework. this would be simpler, faster to implement and to adjust, and be more likely to achieve level - playing field conditions. in the european context, this is an encouragement for building on and adapting the functional coverage of existing regulatory frameworks and, in some cases extending their geographical coverage. what comes to mind in particular is the framework for crypto - assets service providers created in france with the 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches pacte bill, and the european framework for e - money issuers, investment funds and financial market infrastructures. this also

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 ). this might be particularly appropriate for meeting settlement needs in central bank money between financial intermediairies. indeed, asset tokenization initiatives have proliferated among financial players, with the the risk that such developments may lead to disorderly approaches and heterogeneous adjustments of settlement processes, which are currently mainly handled through market infrastructures. the eurosystem, as a major provider of critical wholesale clearing and settlement services in euro, should therefore be open to experimenting the conditions under which it makes central bank money available as a settlement asset. to that end, we, at the banque de france, have started gaining experience with innovative solutions, including in particular recourse to dlt. experimentation is key in this area and this is why, as already announced by governor villeroy de galhau, the banque de france will launch a call for projects before the end of the first quarter of 2020. indeed, we wish to work with industry innovators and 3 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches start running experiments rapidly to possibly integrate a “ wholesale ” cbdc into innovative procedures for exchanging and settling tokenised financial assets. another contribution from central banks could be to help address one of the major failings of the current payment systems which is cross - border retail payments. this is one of the drivers of the development of crypto - assets such as stablecoins, and we believe we could help identify and support other concrete, useful and possibly complementary solutions. in conclusion, let me stress 4 points : it is hard to anticipate the role that stablecoins and more generally crypto - assets might play in the payment system of the future, especially since the features of these assets look set to change considerably. while it is clear that they offer opportunities to improve our payment systems, they can also bring quite material risks which must be addressed. in that context, it is first and foremost the responsibility of private sector entities to design arrangements which do not bring undue risks to our payment systems. regulatory and oversight authorities also have an important role to play in order to ensure that risk management requirements to be met