 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Thomas Kudricki, who is the CTO of e-currency. Thomas, welcome to the studio. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about, of course, digital currency. We are here because you've been participating in a focus group on digital ffiat currency. I wanted to ask you if perhaps you could share your experience of your organisation in the area of digital currency, or central bank digital currency, and tell us a little bit about what's on the horizon as well. Absolutely. Delighted to. e-currency is a company created specifically for the sole purpose of producing tools for central banks to print, issue, distribute and transact in digital ffiat currency equivalent to cash. So, the way we look at it is that tokens that represent actual banknotes. We have spent quite a few years, we were funded about seven years ago, and we spent quite a few years talking to central banks, gathering requirements initially. Unlike perhaps many other players in this area, we started with a very traditional product development process, by which we gathered requirements from the central banks. We spent some time prototyping and building our solution, and now we are in the process of commercially deploying it, and very happy to participate in the ITU efforts to standardise some of that. Now, should central banks consider issuing digital currency, and if so, for what purpose? Well, today everything is being digitised, right? Of course, from music, movies, anything that can be digitised is being digitised. Money is one of those objects or concepts that is being digitised. However, the way it is done, for the most part, is private money is emerging. It's the e-money, it's the mobile money operators that actually control the digital forms of money today. Many central banks find that disturbing, because they are the authority to create, print and distribute cash. So, why they should do it? Mostly because everything is being digitised, of course. Secondary issues are lack of control over what's happening, right? Private money is not interoperable. Typically private money operates in silos that need to be connected. Connecting those silos is somewhat risky, because the ecosystem now grows and becomes even more out of control by the authority that should be exerting this control, namely the central bank. So, why they should do it? To us, it is relatively obvious. They need to be continuing to be the authority that actually prints and distributes cash. Why they should do it now? I think the time is really ripe. We, as I mentioned, have spent some time gathering requirements, talking with central banks, and between the efforts of entities like IMF International Monetary Fund and Bank for International Salements, BIS, and of course standardisation bodies like ITU, a consensus emerges as to how this can be done, and therefore now is the time to actually experiment with it. What are the main challenges facing central banks in issuing digital currencies? It is almost the flip side of the reasons why they should do it. Firstly, a lot of noise surrounding the subject of late. Discussions typically conflate a lot of different subjects. Central banks are looking at this and saying, you know, it's a brand new field. I don't really fully understand the consequences of it. I don't fully understand how to do this. Let me wait. The challenge, of course, in waiting is that the existing E-Money ecosystem spins further and further out of control. Another challenge is lack of standards. Perhaps we can chat about that in a moment. But standardisation and ability to say, okay, we are doing it according to accepted norms is a very comforting thing, of course, for anybody and certainly for relatively conservative organisations like central banks, conservative by design and for very good reasons. So you touched upon it there. But in terms of the areas of digital currency that standards are required for central banks, and how do you think the output of the focus group or ITU could help to bridge the standardisation gap? Yes, very good question. So at E-Currency we are developing, of course, the set of tools to enable central banks to do it, as I mentioned. And we are relatively trailblazing. It's a very new field. And standards allow comfort, first of all. Of course, they allow a competition to enter the field and compete on equal footing, which we would certainly very much welcome. And the areas are numerous, right? I think being a very novel field, even the nomenclature is very confused, right? As a result, one of the three tracks of our working group focused on terminology. What it is we are actually talking about, right? It is not cryptocurrency. It is not various forms of digital assets, although in essence digital fiat currency is a digital asset, but it's a very special asset, right, that is created, issued by the central banks. Secondly, architectural considerations. Once you understand that what it is you're talking about, what it is that you can do about it, how should that be built if you choose to do it? The architecture surrounding that is another actually working group area. We are just starting, right? I think ITU has played a wonderful role hosting all this for us and being a great forum. The working group, I think, is winding down over the next month or so. I think there's so much work. We sort of blazed the trail, if you would, but there's a lot more work to be done. APIs, if we go down to the lower level of technology, standardisation of that is another good, good thing that can come out of this effort. Thomas, we wish you the very best of luck with the future, and thank you for joining us in this year today, and we hopefully will catch up with you again for more insights into this fascinating subject. Thank you so much. Thank you.