 And so I just started with the idea that what we are seeing in the digital currency world is kind of a fear of having a sputnik moment like it happened in 1957 when the then Soviet Union launched this satellite and the United States feared that they may have fell left behind in technological and also military terms. So I think in the digital world we are not there yet. We don't see really actual the sputnik moment but we are getting nearer and I think there are two to three candidates provoking this sputnik feeling which could trigger the broad development of digital central bank currencies and this is certainly the Libra. I think the Libra is very important and great. We can go to slide three. So the Libra I think is one point where people fear this could take over the monetary system. It could be also the Chinese central bank digital currency coming out of the pilot phase where it is right now. And obviously there is also a hot debate about if Bitcoin eventually might take over the role as the world currency. So the question is, is this fear justified? Is it realistic that Libra or China would start to dominate the world currency system with issuing a digital currency thereby having a first mover advantage with the ECB or the Fed? So this is certainly one important question and I will address it during this talk. The agenda I have prepared for today which is the next slide. So the first point, how advanced central banks are with respect to the development of CBDC and the Marian has already touched on this issue and also what the motives behind developing and doing research on CBDC. Then more technically and taking a little bit of a step back, what is CBDC and here I will concentrate on general purpose CBDC and focus in addition or not in addition but complementary to that on account based and cryptographic based CBDC. Then which is the third point I think it's important to understand why there is quite a lot of opposition in parts of the financial sector to a central bank digital currency. Fourth point is about the very important design question. So what are the difference between account based and cryptographic based CBDC? What are the main advantages and disadvantages? And finally I will come back to the question, is there a need for a digital euro and I will wrap up how such a digital euro should look like. So let's start with a question about how advanced central banks are which is shown in the next slide. So we know this is from the survey of the Bank of International Settlement and we know from that that rather sooner than later a couple of central banks might issue CBDC as Marin has already shown. So around 20% think that they will very likely launch CBDC in one to six years. Now the the reasons for doing so and for doing research so in this area they're quite numerous and this comes also from a survey from the from the Bank of International Settlement which is the next slide and Stefan, yeah right, thanks. So and what is quite interesting here is that it's the third part, it's that financial inclusion is very much high on the agenda of developing countries while in advanced economies is not very much or not considered to be a big problem. Payment efficiency is even more important for emerging markets and what is not included here in this survey is the point of monetary sovereignty which could be a subject for countries where they fear to lose completely control of the payment system especially in countries where cash use is dwindling like it is in Sweden. The idea of reducing infections of an epidemic was not included obviously because this survey was done last year. So before diving deeper let's sketch up and take a step back what sample bank digital currency is in comparison to other forms of money. I think for this question the by now already classical money flower which is designed by Bank of International Settlement is rather useful. So to explain it shortly four criteria are here defined in the form of questions. So the first question is is the the currency widely accessible and if it is indeed the case then the currency which complies with this characteristic is included in the red ellipse and if it is not it is outside the red ellipse. Is it digital is the other question is it token based and most importantly is it issued issued by a sample bank and now if it is issued by a sample bank in and it is digital then obviously it is CBDC it is sample bank digital currency. Now in addition to this which is shown in the next slide it is very useful to differentiate between a centralized and a distributed CBDC infrastructure and as well to differentiate between an account based or a token based currency. So under the condition that it's the sample bank which guarantees the value of the money. So otherwise we would not not talk about CBDC we would not talk about sample bank digital currency. So under this condition the first question question is who writes the transactions into the letter and if it's a sample validator who's doing this then we have a centralized approach. If it is in instead a task that is delegated by the sample bank to validators then we would talk about the permission network of validators and it's the distributed approach. So the other question is more technological is it account based or token based and well the account based approach is very similar or very not very abstract because it is very similar to your account at a bank only that you have now direct access to sample bank currency. So what the bank sample bank needs in this case to do a transaction is your identity the identity of the person or of the legal entity of the account to make this transaction. By contrast in a token based CBDC a transaction can only be fulfilled if the user demonstrates knowledge of an encrypted value. So before going more into detail with respect to the advantages and disadvantages of account based various token based let's elaborate first why there is among bankers in some sample bankers too quite a lot of opposition to CBDC and I have here two quotations the one is from the saving group association of Germany in February 2020 and they say the creation of digital sample bank currency must not put in danger the intermediation function of the banking sector. So they fear that we will have or that they will lose business through CBDC as the CBDC takes over some payment functions. Jens Weidmann the president of the Bundesbank he said in January 2019 the biggest threat in terms of financial stability is the possibility of a digital bank run. So what does it mean a bank run is is happening when the people withdraw their money all at the same time from the banking sector. In today's world they would put it in cash but in a world with digital currency with central bank digital currency they would switch it to CBDC. Now as you can do it by mouse click Weidmann obviously fears that this could be done if there is trouble in the banking sector. Interestingly enough there is a way you can easily avoid this problem and it's a proposal from the ECB itself from Ulrich Bindseil who is head of payments at the ECB and he proposes a system where a certain amount of money on your central bank current account so your CBDC account or it could also be a CBToken ledger is not charged by any fees. So up to let's say for example up to 10 000 euro you can have it there on your CBDC as CBDC without that any charge is burdened on it. So this money would be considered as a kind of transaction cash and at the time you want to hold more than these 10 000 euro you would have to pay some fee or you can also say alternatively the central bank would get interest rate payments on the money that you are depositing with the central bank. So basically these would be negative interest rates. Thus it is not very attractive to deposit too much money with the central bank and in a time of crisis where people feel that there is stress in the banking sector and are about to flee the banking sector the central bank could easily increase the fee on CBDC so let's say 50% and people would obviously think twice before depositing their money with the central bank because they would lose money. Thus I would say that the risk of a bank run which many pointed point so much out is not a good argument against a digital euro. This does not mean that bank runs cannot occur anymore but they are not more risky than they are right now. So now let's move to the design question. Account based or token based centralized or distributed and I go step by step I go with about the issue of implementation. So I think the main advantage of an account based CBDC infrastructure would be that implementation could be done rather fast and without too much technological challenges because in today's world CBDC accounts exist for banks they exist also for some persons and for some public entities so what the central bank has to do is only to extend the infrastructure to all people and to all legal entities which apply for now if the central bank that is now the question will the central bank do it all by itself then they would have a very big volume of payment traffic and which they would have to handle and this would certainly require massive technological investments. It is feasible but it would require some time and some money to do so. So the other cheaper way and probably also faster alternative is to delegate the administration of individual central bank accounts to private banks. A token based CBDC would require a blockchain to be established. Well for the central bank this is new infrastructure and the central bank does not have a real world experience on that and this implicates obviously naturally more risk. Now the point scalability very important in the payment system I think account based should not encounter really big scalability problems and this is irrespectively of the question if it is a distributed account based system or a centrally organized system. Now if you take the token based system and you want at the same time a distributed ledger then scalability could become a problem at least with the technological stand where we are today. So this would be I think a problem for organizing CBDC by a distributed ledger. Then there is the issue of anonymity and an account based system anonymity is not given by default. Each account has an identity in a token based system especially a distributed token based system. Some kind of anonymity seems to be possible. There is also a paper from the ECB where they propose anonymity fouches which allow the user of CBDC to make payments up to a certain amount with these fouches which are not going through the usual channel of anti-money laundering and criminal terroristic finance compliance. So up to a certain amount you can do that and if the amounts are higher than the usual compliance and monitoring would take place. But at the end of the day it's not really anonymous. It's still not satisfying someone who wants really have the same substitute as cash. Then there is the point of cross-border payments which could prove I think a very competitive factor or very important factor in competing with other digital currencies. In an account based system such cross-border transaction could be done but they would be as well complicated and expansive similar to what they are today. By contrast with a token based system seamless and inexpensive cross-border payments should be possible. However for such a vision to be realized the international token based systems should have or should be coordinated to incorporate inter-linkage options into the token based approach. Here is the point where I see Libra to enjoy a big comparative advantage because Libra which wants to establish Libra in different currency areas has right from the start the same blockchain system for each jurisdiction. So this is certainly a big advantage while countries they have to coordinate and this has always been difficult but in the today's world or let's say it has been also difficult in pre-Trump times but in today's world it's even more difficult to do so. What about China in this context? China could also gain some advantage in this area if it for example requires from its trading partners to establish the same standard of CBDC to enable cross-border payments. This is well I would say it's rather pressure and not so much coordination. Well having said that especially in a token based CBDC system there is a lot of room for financial innovation which could make a different token based system so even if they are not standardized they could make these token based systems internationally interoperable to compete with Libra. So I think that financial innovation could help here. Well then there is the next point and it's at least as decisive this difference notes it's still the slide before even if the time might be running out but so it's the point of money being programmable and account based money is not programmable but the token based money is and perhaps this is the main reason why ECB should start more aggressively to launch such CBDC because programmable money this could be used for smart contracts and will be used in an economy in a machine economy where IoT and don't think devices are will play an increasing role both in production and in consumption so this might be become a competitive edge and so I think that ECB should not only react to the developments which are outside but also actively go ahead so let's wrap up. So is there a need for a digital euro and how should it be designed so the answer to the question is there a need of a digital or euro is clearly yes I think there is a need because the alternative is that for example private platform companies might take over the global payment system and therefore take also advantage of the data which are incorporated in payments and irrespectively of the viewpoint if these data need protection or not I think they need protection but irrespectively of such a view the data are valuable and it does not look reasonable to leave these data and also the profits connected to them to private firms if sovereigns are able to get hold of these data and to protect their their people and the data of the people. Is in this context the Chinese CBDC a threat to our monetary system perhaps yes the country could try to use its economic power to require companies which are doing business with China to use the Chinese CBDC standard which would imply that related payments would go through this system. In this case you have again a data issue and also the issue of giving China some power in the form of control of the international payment system well similar to the power the US has today through the international settlement system SWIFT. So what is the optimal design here you can see the the different alternatives which I have described and I I have now taken out four criteria scalability is it programmable what about anonymity and cross-border payments is it possible and how cheap or how expensive and the conclusion of all the systems that exist and that could be possible in my view is that a centralized token based CBDC is indeed for the time being right now is the best option and that the CBDC should go ahead with it because it is scalable it is programmable anonymity could be generated partly and cross-border payments could be done quite easily and so this would be all the four factors which would make this very competitive. Yeah that's actually from my side thank you very much and I would be happy to receive questions and discuss some issues.