simply too important to be left to the market. 1 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches second, in the absence of a public anchor, the emergence of new kinds of digital assets could harbour instability and confusion among citizens about what is money and what is not. take for example crypto assets, held or used by 16 % of americans and 10 % of europeans in 2021. their unbacked variants – such as bitcoin or ether – are too volatile to act as a means of payment. and while stablecoins are designed to be less volatile, and therefore more suitable for payments, they are vulnerable to runs - and often not backed at all as we witnessed earlier this year. this highlights the importance of the european crypto - assets regulation ( mica ) that will protect consumers against some of the risks associated with crypto assets. third, the entry of big techs into payments could increase the risk of market domination and dependence on foreign payment technologies, with consequences for europe's strategic autonomy. already now more than two thirds of european card payment transaction are run by companies with headquarters outside the european union. designing digital public money by designing digital public money we can get ahead of these developments and ensure that confidence in the monetary system is maintained and innovation is nurtured. issuing a digital euro would indeed safeguard people's confidence that " one euro is one euro ", allowing them to convert private digital money at par into digital central bank money. it would ensure that money continues to be denominated in euros. and it would be based on a european infrastructure, facilitating intermediaries to scale payments innovation throughout the euro area and thus strengthen europe's strategic autonomy. our work on exploring the underlying rationale, potential benefits and risks and core design principles of a digital euro has made good progress. it is not a race, but as a matter of fact the euro area is at a relatively advanced stage in exploring a central bank digital currency ( cbdc ). but to realise this vision, the focus of our work now shifts to the concrete design and embedding the digital euro in a sound legal framework. this is as an area where colegislators have an even more important role to play. i'm therefore very much looking forward to the legislative proposal for establishing a digital euro which the european commission will propose shortly. in particular, co - legislators must define the balance between competing public objectives in the policy areas that the treaty assigned to them. two aspects come to

. another interesting area for exploration is the provision of standardised abs prospectus templates, including common diagrams, which would allow non - specialised investors greater ability to make comparisons across products. abs are of course highly diverse instruments and so i would not propose to shoe - horn all types into a single form. rather, the idea is to provide a common starting template for describing abs transactions that could then be departed from as needed. my concern here is that prospectuses and broader transaction documentation must inform both legal and financial specialists. some creative thinking on how to present the information in an accessible manner may help preserve legal precision while avoiding information overload. this would build on what i believe are the very helpful esma proposals for a transaction summary. looking forward, i believe that greater standardisation of abs products is a key goal to stimulate greater market activity. sme abs, for instance, are widely acknowledged to be extremely heterogeneous across eu countries, in part reflecting both the type of business and banking relationships that prevail in each jurisdiction. any efforts that could be made to bis central bankers ’ speeches enhance the transparency and consistency of abs structures could, i believe, provide greater comfort to investors reluctant to take the plunge into these instruments. treatment of abs by credit rating agencies my third proposal relates to the treatment of european abs by credit ratings agencies. currently many abs in stressed economies are constrained by the rating of the corresponding sovereign. the rationale put forward by rating agencies is that there are immitigable risks that affect all issuers and assets in a particular country, above all the sovereign. as regards calibration, some quantitative and many qualitative factors are taken into account by the agencies when setting this ceiling. yet, i question whether this ceiling is appropriate. for example, i am not aware of any defaults on greek rmbs or abs transactions, despite the partial sovereign debt exchange in 2012. or, in italy, the vast majority of rmbss appear to be constrained by the sovereign ceiling despite an average of 25 % current credit enhancement. and, from my latest check, the ecb ’ s composite index of systemic stress for the euro area is around the 5th percentile of the distribution since january 1999 and six times lower than the median from 2010 to 2012. this suggests that many of the systemic risks used to justify the country ceiling approach seem far off. from all these examples, and others, i find it hard to believe that the redenomination risk that