is a pretty good example of how easy it is to take the prevailing situation for granted. the main catalyst for the discussion has, of course, been the global financial crisis that broke out in autumn 2008 and its consequences, which we are in many ways still dealing with. put simply, one might describe the predominant view prior to the crisis as follows. international economic developments had been favourable over a fairly long period of time. following the crisis that hit sweden and some other countries at the beginning of the 1990s, inflation had on the whole been low and stable, while growth had been good and there had been only minor cyclical fluctuations. this was considered so remarkable that it was given its own name – the great moderation. the reasons for the great moderation have never been made entirely clear, but many people felt that one important explanation was that policy, and perhaps in particular monetary policy, had begun to be conducted in a better way. 1 compared with the economically much more volatile 1970s and 1980s, there was much greater focus on keeping inflation in check. to make this easier, many countries had transferred responsibility for monetary policy to independent central banks. moreover, an increasing number of countries had introduced something that was a monetary policy innovation in the early 1990s – inflation targeting. it appeared as though one had not only succeeded in checking inflation, but also managed the cyclical fluctuations reasonably well and laid the foundations for a good development in the economy in general. it was so successful that it may have led to a blind faith in the precision of monetary policy and what it can achieve. it was assumed that the financial markets were, on the whole, efficient and functioning smoothly, at least in the industrial nations. of course, financial crises were still considered possible, but as isolated events, often caused by individual economies being mismanaged. the contagion effects were assumed to be limited and the prevalent opinion was that wise crisis management could relatively quickly get the economies concerned back on track. the successful management of the so - called it bubble at the beginning of the 2000s was regarded as an example of financial crises not needing to be particularly troublesome. what is clear today, but was not clear as recently as six years ago, is that this picture was far too optimistic. but then the crisis came along and turned most things upside down. reassessment of the financial markets one obvious lesson from the crisis was that the financial markets were not functioning as well and as efficiently as we had believed. instead of contributing to growth

aligned. if multiple third - party platforms with wholesale cbdc were to exist, this approach could be replicated. de - tokenising wholesale cbdc on one platform and tokenising sight deposits on another would use the same process and would be facilitated by the swiss rtgs system. the role of the snb in this process would be to control the issuance and redemption of wholesale cbdc on the respective platforms. my focus so far has been on project helvetia iii, which explores wholesale cbdc on a third - party platform. but there are other approaches to settling tokenised asset transactions. to understand the respective risks and benefits, we are examining two alternative approaches to wholesale cbdc. in the second part of my remarks, i would like to describe them and offer a preliminary assessment. alternative settlement approaches and preliminary assessment the first alternative approach is linking the tokenised asset platform with the swiss rtgs system. i will refer to it as the rtgs link. the second approach uses private token money which is issued on the tokenised asset platform and which is bankruptcyprotected and fully backed by sight deposits at the snb. i will call this approach backed private token money. 2 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches the rtgs link employs a synchronised approach to settlement : sight deposits and tokenised assets remain on different infrastructures. to settle a tokenised asset transaction in this setting, the transfer of assets and central bank money is synchronised by messages sent back and forth between the different infrastructures. this corresponds to the current process, where central banks support links between their rtgs systems and other financial market infrastructures in order to facilitate safe settlement. an rtgs link could leverage existing functionality in the swiss rtgs system. central bank money would not leave the current sight deposit accounts, thus preventing fragmentation of central bank money. it would also avoid the governance questions arising from issuing central bank money on a third - party platform. however, an rtgs link would replicate the current process, which builds on synchronisation. this might limit the ability to improve the status quo. backed private token money in turn enables an integrated approach to settlement whereby money and assets would be held on the same platform. it would be accessible to banks that already have access to central bank money and would have risk characteristics similar to those of central bank money. if the token issuer defaults, holders of such private token money have recourse to the central bank money