that of the late 19th century and much lower than that in the 1850s. second, the terms of trade have risen much more than they did in earlier mining booms. the current level of the terms of trade rivals the sharp peaks that were associated with rises in wool prices following the first world war and during the korean war. the current mining boom has seen both the volume and the price of resource exports rise strongly. third, this is the first boom during which the exchange rate has been floating, and in which a significant rise in the nominal exchange rate has been an important part of the economic adjustment. this has added an important degree of flexibility to the economy, by allowing the real exchange rate to rise through a means other than inflation. how long the current surge in mining activity will continue is uncertain. past booms do not seem to have lasted more than about 15 years before resource depletion, or international or domestic developments, acted to slow economic activity and bring the boom to an end. on this occasion, the growth potential of countries such as china and india suggests that the expansion in resource demand could continue for an extended period, though this will depend at least to some extent on the economic management skills of the authorities in these countries, not to mention our own. assessment the booms that i have described took place over a period of about 160 years, and against very different backgrounds. yet, some similarities come through. the first point that stands out is the important role played by global events in causing mining booms in australia. in some cases this was due to the effect on prospecting activity ( e. g. the impact of the california gold rush in the 1850s boom and the availability of international capital to fund the 1890s boom ) ; in some cases it was due to a change in the relative prices of commodities on global markets ( e. g. the late 1970s boom ) ; and in others due to the emergence of powerful new trading partners ( e. g. the development of japan in the 1960s and the development of china and india recently ). the second point is that the overall impact of each boom was to strengthen the economy. increased investment in mining, higher income from mining activities, and the need for increased infrastructure to service the mines all worked in this direction. also, each boom had high, or increasing, population growth in its early years which added to the economic momentum. not everybody benefited from that economic pick - up and some industries went into decline due to the difficulty in competing

proposals, namely the mandatory certification of smart contracts prior to use. european regulatory developments are underway in other areas and will also be needed to facilitate innovation while preserving financial stability. they include measures in support of digital entities, access to financial data and artificial intelligence. why explore a wholesale cbdc? slide 5 3 / 7 bis - central bankers'speeches our second conviction is that, in order to have a framework that inspires trust in the development of the tokenisation of finance, cebm needs to be maintained as the primary settlement asset for financial intermediaries, which are the most sensitive in terms of systemic consequences in the event of problems. to achieve this goal, central banks need to adapt the form and provision of cebm to reflect the characteristics of transactions in tokenised assets, that is, tokenised securities such as shares, bonds or fund units, to ensure that cebm can be issued, recorded and used for settlement on dlt. this conviction spurred the banque de france to become the first central bank to launch an ambitious experimental programme on wholesale central bank digital currency ( cbdc ) for large - value payments in 2020. exploratory work by the eurosystem on a wholesale cbdc slide 6 this conviction is shared by the eurosystem, which launched its own exploratory work in april 2023 to trial three solutions for the settlement of tokenised assets in cebm. the banque de france's wholesale cbdc solution, based on our own dlt ( dl3s ), is one of the solutions that will be tried out in 2024. the eurosystem recently published the list of participants in the first wave of exploratory work, and we are delighted to test our dlt solution with them. this work supplements the european pilot regime, which is covered by special regulatory exemptions and which is being used to test the issuance, trading and settlement of tokenised assets under real - life conditions. it came into effect in march 2023 and will help us to assess the existence of use cases and determine whether there is genuine demand for tokenisation. it will also enable us to identify the regulatory adjustments needed for market infrastructures to operate on dlt over the long run, using a broad panel of tokenised settlement assets, including cebm. the banque de france is also taking part in several international initiatives, particularly those being spearheaded by the bank for international settlements'innovation hub, which is coordinating projects to explore the future of