can increase both from research and from the end users of the research 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches product. ladies and gentlemen! the research papers to be presented in this workshop reflect the serious thoughts and discussions of expert researchers on major issues. these include not only the work of the bank of albania, but also the work done in other central banks and academia. the topics cover a wide range of very useful issues. i hope that the research presented at today ’ s workshop will spark vigorous debate and allow the sharing of diverse opinions that will help each other improve and strengthen your work form a different perspective. i invite you all and the bank of albania ’ s researchers to use this activity to learn something new, and as a platform to strengthen the cooperation for your own and your institutions ’ benefit. i would like to end my speech by wishing you a productive and successful workshop! 3 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches

. some crypto - asset projects aim to compete with – rather than supplement – this system by offering alternative settlement assets, “ coins ", whose value is not necessarily linked and fixed to central bank or commercial bank money. the implementation of these projects has shown that it is not easy to create the conditions for confidence in these alternative settlement assets and their use remains marginal to date. however, if their use were to grow significantly, their impact on the global economy could pose a major challenge to our current monetary order with major concerns for stability and sovereignty. the second consequence that deserves particular attention is the processing and storage of payment data. both the applicable law and the ability of private and public players to ensure the proper management of their data depend on location of servers. yet a growing share of data storage services is being outsourced to cloud providers, most of which are foreign. in addition, the use of public cloud services, where data from multiple customers are aggregated on a single server, raises issues of data security and auditability. several recent episodes such as the us sanctions in crimea ( 2014 ) or the amazon web services failure ( 2017 ) have illustrated the real risks to and impacts on the economy of a destabilisation of payment activities. they thus stressed the need for the community to maintain end - to - end control over an activity that is essential to industry, commerce and public services. 2. faced with these challenges, what roles should central banks play? in this perspective, the public authorities responsible for the development of the regulatory framework applicable to financial services and european private players obviously have a major role to play. the future of europe ’ s sovereignty over its payments system will be all the more secure if it can rely in particular on the ability of its private and industrial players, fintechs and financial intermediaries to adapt and innovate continuously in order to reap the benefits for themselves and their customers of an open, competitive and highly integrated payments market at european and international level. 2 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches in the exercise of their supervisory mandate, central banks can contribute to this by reconciling the need for openness and support for innovation, which is inherent to an economy integrated into world trade for the benefit of consumers, with their fundamental mission as guarantors and promoters of sound risk management. but they can also contribute through their two other traditional channels, namely as a catalyst and a provider of settlement services in central bank money. a - i believe that