of demand from major trading partners was reflected in weaker domestic economic activity and therefore banks became more cautious in providing credit to the business sector and subsequently to households. weak foreign demand is thus probably the most severe factor stemming from the global financial crisis that is affecting the czech economy. from the statistical point of view, the financial crisis which turned into a global recession has provided a good opportunity to carry out a stock - taking exercise in the areas of data availability and timeliness. in the case of the czech national bank, it was quite a comprehensive exercise since the central bank acts as a monetary authority, integrated supervisor and statistical institution, which brings a lot of synergies. during the period of turbulence banks were required to provide us with additional information regarding, for example, their liquidity positions, exposures vis - a - vis the group of their foreign parent bank and information indicating how active the banks were in their lending activities. this information was even provided on a daily basis for some time. some data, both standard and those provided as a result of the global financial crisis, are collected mainly for supervisory reasons and other data for monetary purposes, but put together they provide the policy makers with a comprehensive set of information. in addition, the statistical and regulatory concepts have interacted more closely since data collection for both purposes started to be carried out in a coordinated way. integration of supervision in the central bank, which took place more than three years ago, thus also proved successful during this turbulent period. the czech national bank is both a user and producer of statistics. macroeconomic statistics produced by the czech statistical office are very important for the central bank. price statistics, particularly consumer price statistics, are a key set of indicators reflecting the ability of the central bank to fulfil its main task – price stability. nevertheless, not only consumer price statistics are in the sphere of our interest. as it is known, we operate in the inflation targeting regime. since this is a forward - looking framework, we undergo a forecasting exercise which results in a comprehensive macroeconomic forecast every quarter of the year. this forecast is based on a number of economic variables and national accounts figures are at the centre of our interest. i do not want to list all the other statistics necessary for analytical and forecasting activities at our bank, but let me mention at least one more area : residential property prices. property prices played an important role in the global financial crisis. from this point of view, our discussions with the czech statistical office in this

mojmir hampl : central banks, digital currencies and monetary policy in times of elastic money speech by mr mojmir hampl, vice governor of the czech national bank, at the official monetary and financial institutions forum ( omfif ) roundtable, london, 11 july 2017. * * * ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. before i start in earnest, let me thank the omfif for the kind invitation to this event, which allows me to speak in front of such a distinguished audience. it is an utmost pleasure for me to be here. the topics of today ’ s session are threefold : cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies and monetary policy with elastic money. i ’ ll try to touch upon all of these topics and bind them together, yet i realise the task is challenging. let me begin with a story from prague. in our capital city we have a strong community of supporters and users of cryptocurrencies. among libertarians, some of them my ex - colleagues or friends from the university of economics in prague, bitcoin is seen as a real, fully fledged alternative to the current monetary order. indeed, i could show you a place in prague where one can only pay in bitcoin. by the way, i appreciate the name chosen for the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin. in the era when the foundations of the monetary system were based on precious metals, people sometimes “ bit the coins ” to check whether or not they were counterfeit. in the digital age, of course, biting won ’ t help, and standard counterfeiting doesn ’ t rank among the many problems that bitcoin faces. two years ago we held a seminar on cryptocurrencies ( and especially bitcoin ) at our central bank. when we were preparing for the event, people from the libertarian, cryptocurrency - loving community in prague asked me : aren ’ t you afraid of us? aren ’ t you afraid of bitcoin and other independent, central - bank - free currencies and their power to marginalise traditional money? i said – well, not really. let ’ s put aside the fact that all of these alternative currencies are still marginal in terms of size and scope ( all the electronic transactions using bitcoin worldwide combine to some 16 % of the number of electronic transactions conducted in the czech koruna, a currency used by a