blatant violations of the treaty at the same time. we had two sets of diametrically opposed criticisms there. one was that we should have cut greece off any line of financing immediately, which would have implied the full collapse of the greek economy and likely exit of greece out of the euro ; and the other one saying that we should have provided unlimited, unconditional liquidity to the greek government and the greek economy no matter what. the support given to greece was substantial. at its peak the combined lending of the ecb and bank of greece to greek banks reached €127 billion or 71 % of the country ’ s gdp. we did this while the first group of critics was suggesting we should have cut all lines immediately. we continued to finance the private sector with safeguards to make sure that there was no further financing of the state. there was no monetary financing. it was all in all the right way to go because we managed to both keep the euro intact and also avoid circumventing the treaty. as peter praet reminded us at the time, this implied two major changes to the governance of ela interventions : first, the duration of assistance lengthened ; second, the scope of assistance broadened from individual institutions to entire banking systems. yes. it was a real balancing act ; a tightrope act. yes. it was not easy at all. did you do a study, though, on the consequences of greece leaving the euro? our job is to look at contingencies. but let me be very clear, on the euro, there was no plan b. why? because the ecb has been created with the mandate to maintain price stability and price stability is founded on the existence of the euro. otherwise it has no meaning if there is no euro. which price stability or which currency are we supposed to maintain? the dollar? no. the pound? no. it ’ s the euro. so that ’ s why there ’ s no plan b. it ’ s good to hear that. but on greece clearly there was quite a bit of pressure to say, you know what, let them go. yes, but i did say this openly in a eurogroup to a minister who was suggesting or hinting that we should have cut them off a long time ago. i said : ‘ look, if you want to push greece out of the euro, you do it. don ’ t use the ecb to do it. ’ basically that

2 % of account holders. second is liquidity risk. these currencies still always need transferring to the real economy because your bakery will not accept them. there were conferences on bitcoins where they said you could pay with bitcoin. but when you tried to pay the entrance fee with bitcoin, it took so long that the conference was over by the time the payment was received. it is not an efficient system. the third risk is that people use cryptocurrencies to create leverage because they don ’ t get leverage any more in the real economy. for example, consumers could use their credit cards to make such investments and increase their indebtedness. the higher the leverage, the greater the risk as well. the fourth risk is the operational and technical immaturity of the technology. we are open to the technology of distributed ledgers. but that is something different from bitcoin. bitcoin itself belongs to no one ; no one is backing it, no one is issuing it. the mining is happening to a large extent in remote places and involves very high energy consumption. bitcoin ’ s estimated annual energy consumption has now reached more than 52 terawatt hours per year, which is more than the total energy consumption of portugal. we see that, for example, when approval is sought, it sometimes takes several hours to get one block validated. the ecb, by contrast, is about to offer instant payments in all european countries. an instant payment costs 0. 2 cent and the recipient has it within 10 seconds. this is efficient and pan - european, and it is also operated by trusted authorities as well as regulated and supervised entities. then you have contagion channels for the risks of virtual currencies. if households are heavily involved in bitcoin and the whole thing collapses, it could create a wealth effect on the economy, depending of course on the scale of the market. with official currencies, you have central banks, like the ecb, you have governments who put political capital into maintaining a currency and supporting it. but if people do not distinguish between the two things – and this is why i don ’ t like the word “ currency ” for these schemes – it would undermine confidence in the official currency. 3 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches and some of those who promote these new schemes want a currency which is not controlled by a government. so it ’ s a slightly sympathetic anarchic or