While speaking at the Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum Meeting in London yesterday, Deputy Governor of the Bank of France said that crypto assets like Libra and the digital Yuan could pose risks to security and financial stability. He also talked about the effects of independent crypto assets on the global payments ecosystem.
Beau said that today’s crypto-assets do not satisfactorily offer the qualities expected from a settlement asset to be used interchangeably with commercial bank money and central bank money. The deputy governor also spoke about the central bank-backed digital currencies (CBDCs). He divided them into two categories; retail CBDC and wholesale CBDC.
Beau reckons that motivation to issue a retail CBDC could be due to a significant demand for digital payments. He said that he does not believe anyhow that such an initiative should be conceived as a means to counterbalance initiatives such as Libra. However, he concluded that countries should not refrain from experimenting with different forms of CBDC.
