as experience has shown in the last few years, they are far from immune, and europe has made the right step by adopting the mica regulation. failing to regulate crypto - assets and non - banks today would merely sow the seeds for tomorrow's financial crisis. beyond these regulatory issues, it has become more and more apparent that we currently lack the anchor provided by central bank money, which drastically reduces counterparty and liquidity risks, and crucially ensures the finality of payments. a wholesale central bank digital currency would ensure convertibility between tokenised assets, exactly as central banks currently ensure convertibility between commercial bank monies, allowing for delivery - versus - payment and payment - versus - payment. in short, tokenised central bank money would provide a " safety pivot ", and serve as a reliable basis of trust on which these new technologies could realise their full potential. ii. a step further with the interlinking of fast - payment systems and a european shared ledger to meet the challenges of transition and growth central banks must therefore keep up with these developments, iv in order to explore the potential of dlt and foster innovation while preserving the anchoring role of central bank money. building among others on the banque de france's pioneering experiments between 2020 and 2023, v the eurosystem conducted a series of new experiments on wholesale cbdc between april and november 2024, vi with the active involvement of the banque de france, banca d'italia and bundesbank as solution providers. we witnessed active industry participation in the eurosystem experiments, 2 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches and i would like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to your strong commitment – which, i believe, also reflects the growing awareness of the need for a safe settlement asset. together, we successfully tested numerous and very diverse use cases, ranging from primary issues to cross - currency payments, repos, margin calls and asset management, to give a few examples. actual settlement was even tested for the lifecycle management of securities and secondary market transactions. with this ambitious programme, we have further delivered on our learning - by - doing approach, which is of the essence. as announced, the eurosystem will draw lessons from the exploratory work, including on how to facilitate the provision of central bank money settlement for wholesale asset transactions on dlt platforms. clearly, it is in the interest of both european commercial banks and the public sector to work together towards a

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