Speaking during an online seminar, the Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe stated BoE would not protect commercial banks against the impact of digital currencies. Instead, these banks must adjust to the emergence of digital currencies and find a way to stay relevant. Cunliffe acknowledged that cryptocurrencies could change the financial industry in England. According to him, the main change would be a reduction in the number of households willing to hold money in traditional bank accounts.
“Protecting the banks isn’t the BoE’s job.”
Bank of England’s deputy governor Cunliffe made it clear that protecting banks is not the BoE’s job. “Our job is not to protect bank business models. Banks will have to adjust. Our job is to ensure that if bank business models change, we manage the financial and macro-economic consequences of that,” he noted. Cunliffe, who is also in charge of financial stability at the BoE, believes that policymakers must accelerate their digital currency considerations. As Reuters reported, Cunliffe called on the policymakers to keep pace with the private sector’s development of digital currencies or risk being unable to regulate the industry.
BoE governor asks for global standards for stablecoins.
As reported earlier, the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey had asked the G20 economies to work together and establish common global standards for stablecoins and central bank-backed digital currencies. The BoE governor opined that the top economies need to arrive at a mutual regulatory consensus for stablecoins. The governor said, “if stablecoins are to be widely used as a means of payment, they must have equivalent standards to those that are in place today for other forms of payment types and the forms of money transferred through them.”
