. the cost of financial stabilisation in the case of south africa has been concentrated in the reserve bank ’ s forward book. in the case of many of the other afflicted countries, it remained vested in the private sector but eventually also came to book in national budgets, that is after private sector institutions collapsed under the burden of huge exchange rate losses. is the forward book of the reserve bank / treasury really such a bad thing after all? how can it be phased out from future stabilisation programmes, that is after exchange controls have disappeared? we south africans should approach this challenge in a more positive and constructive way, and should not only concentrate on the obvious disadvantages of a scheme that also provides very valuable protection to private sector users of foreign currencies.

yves mersch : distributed ledger technology - role and relevance of the european central bank speech by mr yves mersch, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at the 22nd handelsblatt annual conference " banken - technologie ", frankfurt am main, 6 december 2016. * * * introduction today ’ s discussions have revolved around digitalisation and new technologies and how they might change the banking business of tomorrow. roy charles amara, a researcher and scientist, once said that “ we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run ”. the internet is a case in point. some of the wilder predictions during the “ hype ” phase never came to pass. that said, no one can deny how powerfully it has insinuated itself into our daily lives, fundamentally changing how we communicate and process information, and no one can know where it will take us next. whether or not we will overestimate distributed ledger technology ( dlt ) in the short run and underestimate it in the long run remains to be seen. however, i am sure we can agree that dlt currently stands in the limelight. a lot has been said about the potential impact of dlt on the roles and services of central banks. in particular, questions related to whether or not central banks should move central bank money to dlt and whether there is a need for issuing central bank digital currency. consequently, i think it ’ s time to frame the discussion. this speech will : 1. outline the ecb ’ s position on dlt ; 2. discuss possible scenarios for adoption ; and 3. shed light on the global interaction between central banks in the field of dlt. financial innovation transforming market infrastructure services the internet, mobile phones and tablets have changed the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we store information – frankly, the way we live. the financial industry is experiencing similar change. we refer to it as fintech – innovations that could result in new business models or products with disruptive potential in the financial sector. dlt is a focal point in fintech as its perceived opportunities are the key motivation for market participants, infrastructure providers and central banks to explore the technology. in our reflections around dlt, we need to bear in mind that the possible impact of dlt depends on how market players ultimately decide to embrace it. in the abstract, three scenarios can be imagined :