 Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our session Creating a Credible and Trusted Digital Currency. In a fun and frenetic 45 minutes, we are going to walk you through the opportunities, the challenges, some of the concerns around digital currencies. Now, what you may have been observing here in Davos this week is that the conversation around stable coin digital currencies, and we'll define those terms, has shifted. It's no longer a conversation about whether this is going to happen, whether we'll see an issuance of this kind of opportunity. It's more a matter of when and how. And our panelists today, our distinguished panelists, are going to get into some of these specifics. To my immediate left, we have Senior Minister Thurman from Singapore. We then move over to Valdez Dombrovsky's from the European Commission. Benoit Coray from the Bank for International Settlements, also known as the BIS. Neha Narula from the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT. And David Marcus of Calibra and of Facebook. So, Neha, I'll turn to you to kick us off. Could you please walk us through some of the terminology? It's quite confusing in this space. Give us a sense of definitions. Are we talking about Bitcoin or what is this? Yeah, thanks, Sheila. It's definitely a bit confusing because of the cryptocurrency craze. I think what's happened is that cryptocurrencies have inspired us to rethink the way that we move and transmit value and what we can do with it. We have things like cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, which is not actually what we're talking about today. We're talking more about digital currency. The idea here is that we're talking about a form of currency that's perhaps public, issued by a central bank, or perhaps private, issued by an institution, but something that corresponds to what we know more commonly as government currencies or fiat currency. In addition to that, we've seen some innovation in the cryptocurrency blockchain world and things have been created called stablecoins. The idea behind a stablecoin, some examples of these are USDC or Tether, the idea behind a stablecoin is that either someone stores government currency in a bank account one-to-one and issues a digital token representing that, or there are some really more interesting complex ideas that are based on collateral and algorithms to maintain a stable peg. In addition to that, we have digital assets more broadly. These might be a form of digital gold or real estate equities, commodities. The idea here is by wrapping these assets in software, we can enable new ways of storing and transmitting them. Thank you. Could you say a bit about blockchain technology? There's a lot of conflation, I think, with this concept of digital currency and a blockchain technology. What are the distinctions, if any? I think we were definitely inspired by blockchains and cryptocurrencies to rethink how these things could be built, but it's important to note that digital currency doesn't necessarily require a blockchain-like data structure behind it. We could implement digital currency in many different ways. In fact, many people say to me, don't we already have digital currency? We, you know, I make payments electronically, I transfer money electronically, how is this any different? I think the key idea here is that we're talking about a different interface. We're talking about something that a user or a company can hold directly, not necessarily through another institution like a bank. So, Thurman, I'll turn to you. Given this framing of digital currencies and our understanding of them, what's the opportunity? Why is this exciting? I think that's a good question, or what's the problem? And before we sort of continue this horserace of all the different initiatives, we've got to ask ourselves, what are the real use cases? Where are we going to add a value? What gaps are we trying to plug? What inefficiency are we trying to sort of get around? And I think the three big use cases are first, in cross-border payments. Most especially for people who are not making large payments. And the largest case of people who are not making large payments is the remittance business, evolving migrant workers of one form or another. That's a big business. It's currently, by and large, quite inefficient, not always reliable, and it costs too much. And if you're only making a payment of $100, that's the cost required, the fixed fee, is not a trivial sum. That's one thing. Second, financial inclusion. And here, I think what we are seeing in digital tokens, mobile wallets, et cetera, is broadly about digital inclusion. And it started off with credit schemes and the like, but now you have the opportunity for payments to be made by small enterprises, micro-enterprises, individual farmers. Everyone can actually partake in the modern economy. And it's an example of how FinTech is actually broadening excess, lowering costs, and including people in the new economy. So I think that's potentially quite a large use case. And particularly for emerging countries, I think it's really significant. Thirdly, on the defensive side, I would say there's an opportunity to reduce an impossible route out the very large volume of illicit finance that takes place globally. And digital tokens are either part of the solution or they're part of the problem. Today, by and large, they're part of the problem. It's well known that a large part of cryptocurrency usage is really for illicit finance of one form or another. But well-regulated with enough visibility, with enough public policy as part of this, governing this infrastructure, I think it can be part of the solution. Because remember, the cash economy is one that's well used for corruption and well used for all forms of money laundering. So getting around the problems of the cash economy, but not going for the very simple solutions we're seeing today, which actually are introducing more efficient ways of transmitting finance illegally, transmitting funds illegally, should be the objective. So basically cross-border payments, making it cheaper, faster and more reliable. Second, financial inclusion, particularly for smaller players, smaller enterprises and ordering individuals. And thirdly, rooting out illicit finance. So I think it's important to note that these use cases that you cite are globally relevant. I think there is a tendency to assign some of them to assume that the political poor divorces the invisible poor, for example, only exist in emerging economies. But of course, we know the significant portion of the American population, the European population, that is, in fact, comprises the invisible poor. But beyond these cases, Benoit, I'd love to hear from you. You have a recent announcement in this space, and I'd love to know, why so much activity from Europe? What is it that's so attractive about this opportunity? So, Sheila, first I wanted to thank you very much for the way you're framing the discussion that is starting from the use cases. Digital currency, and in particular, central bank digital currency, CBDC is not primarily a technical discussion. It's not primarily a technological discussion. It's about meeting needs. And then we've got to ask people, what are the needs? And then it's about setting principles. And it's about making it consistent internationally. Technology comes last, in my view. So I'm not so excited to know whether this will be a blockchain or not a blockchain and which kind of proof of work, proof of stake. This will come in due time, but it's not the primary question. And so, at the BIS, we've asked our members, we have, for the second year, we've done a survey for our members, and I'm coming to the difference between advanced economies and emerging market economies, which the senior minister started to discuss. And the numbers are quite interesting. So the report is out today, a few minutes ago, actually. 80% of central banks are engaged in CBDC work, 80%, which is up from 70% last year and 65% in 2017. There is a strong focus on retail CBDC. And when we ask different central banks about why they're doing it, the answers are different. Emerging market colleagues say that's about financial inclusion and that's about reducing the use of cash. While advanced colleagues in advanced economies tell us that's more about making sure that they will keep the link between citizens and the central bank in the face of a disappearing use of cash in some economies. So these are already different motivations. And what's also very interesting, also to set the timeline, that we are asking our members when are you going to do it? So 10% of central banks say they're likely to issue a general purpose CBDC, that is a retail CBDC, in the next three years, which is small but still twice as much as last year, up from 5%. And 20% say we're going to do it in the medium term, that is up to six years. Last year, all central banks indicating likely to implement were very small. And this year, when big central bank joined. So we now have roughly one-fifth of the global population in jurisdictions where the central bank tells us we're likely to do it within the next three years. So that gives you a sense of the shifting timeline and of the different needs. So emerging market economies are really focused on financial inclusion, focused on reducing the use of cash. And as the senior minister said, it's part of a broader discussion on payments and in particular on cross-border payments and how to make them cheaper and faster. You touched on a term that I wanna make sure we pause on, which is this concept of retail CBDC. So David, perhaps you could walk us through retail CBDC versus wholesale CBDC and explain the difference to the audience. Well, so in a construct where central banks issue or would issue digital currencies, they could distribute that digital currency in two possible ways. One is wholesale CBDC. So through existing banks and the banking system or retail going straight to consumers. And back to Tharman's question earlier on the panel, which is, you have to focus, I'm a product guy so I like to look at the problems you're trying to solve with a solution. And the big question is if you're actually targeting wholesale distribution to banks, then what problem are you solving? You could probably have some efficiency gains, but banks currently have windows with the Fed, DCB, et cetera that are quite functional. Or if you go retail, then the big question for central banks is are you equipped and prepared to serve consumers or small businesses? And what happens with the banks that actually need the leverage to extend loans and to fuel the growth of the economies that we're in? That being said, there are interesting hybrid models that have been evoked in CBDC around enabling not only banks but wallets to have access to those facilities. And those are really interesting developments that I think are worth continuing to track. But I have to say that the whole attention of the world now on digital currencies, whether it's stable coins or CBDCs or other forms is really encouraging because as far as we're concerned when we started this journey, mainly almost six months ago, the whole idea was really not around a certain way of doing things, but more around let's come together and let's try to figure out how we solve a problem that is honestly unacceptable. On 1.7 billion people who are currently unbanked, another billion underserved, and we still don't have a global network to move digital money around. And in telecommunications, we went from paying a dollar a minute for an international call to not paying anything with a very cheap Android device using over-the-top communication apps. But the same hasn't happened with money. It hasn't changed and some of the networks are 50 years old, the web is 30 years old, and we still don't have an easy, cheap, efficient way for people to have access to digital money and move it around. So personally, I'm really excited that we're having all of these conversations now. And I think everyone, all the right people are around the table to make it happen. So I hope it happens. Well, this building on that a little bit, I'd love to hear from you. What do you see as the modifications to the existing banking system? Is this a threat to commercial banks? What are the implications? Well, first of all, indeed. Also, when we look at this from the European Union perspective, how to react on developments on crypto assets, stable coins, other initiatives. First, we need to see what shortcomings those initiatives are addressing. And from that point of view, there are very different situations. In a sense, if you look at, well, crypto assets or as they were called, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and a number of others, well, they are not widely used for a store of value, for transactions, they are very volatile. And actually, European Commission called on European supervisory authorities to issue the warnings for investors on the highly speculative nature of these investments. At the same time, there is needs which are unaddressed, including on fast, convenient, and cheap cross-border payments. And we are partly addressing this problem within Europe. We have single euro payment area where you can transfer euros within euro area at the same cost as you transfer euros domestically. Last month, we extended this system to the whole European Union. So also countries outside Europe can transfer the money, the euros at the same cost. But it's still, for example, not fast. So currently, we are concentrating in Europe on developing pan-European instant payments system. And that's where initiatives like, for example, Libra come in because, in a sense, they seem to be offering the same solution on international scale. So we're looking, so what is there? And it's clear if European banking system, because if we talk instant payments, these other initiatives, so to say, driven by and closely linked with European banking system, if they do not address this demand themselves, somebody else will address this demand. Is it Libra or some other initiatives? Time will show. So it also shows the European banking system that they need to address the demand for those faster and cheaper payments. And that's, I would say, the main point here. Then if you look at stablecoin initiatives, especially like global stablecoin initiatives, of course, there are a number of issues which are raised. Some of them are mentioned, like on anti-money laundering. I've also mentioned tax evasion, consumer protection, personal data protection. So there's a whole range of issues which needs to be addressed. So what we did recently in European Union, we made what we call regulatory mapping of different crypto assets, including stablecoins. Looking where they fit in current EU legal system, do we need some new rules? And basically the conclusion is that yes, especially for crypto assets like stablecoins, you are likely to need new rules and we'll be preparing them in a context of our next FinTech action plan. But one thing I want to say, in a sense, we don't want to regulate financial innovation out of Europe. We want to regulate financial innovation in Europe while addressing potential risks. Thank you. So leaving aside central bank digital currency and focusing from it on stablecoin, and just as a quick reminder, central bank digital currency is essentially digital fiat currency versus stablecoin which is pegged to fiat or to an asset. What are we to make of the proliferation? I wouldn't say 1,000 flowers are blooming, but certainly 1,000 seeds seem to have been planted. Is it inevitable that we see consolidation or how can we make sense of a world in which there is a multitude of stablecoin? May I start with you? Yeah, well, I think initially we're definitely going to have competition as we try lots of different ideas out. It's, I think it's important to remember this space is still in its infancy and we are still determining what the right technology stack is exactly what the use cases are, how the platform might be used. So I expect we'll see multiple different stablecoins. They will compete. I do have to say however that I do think that ultimately a CBDC is really the answer and issuing a central bank digital currency directly, it reduces risk and it allows the central bank to provide a public option for money, which it should. So I think that stablecoins, certainly, we will have many more of them for the years to come, but if CBDC does really happen, it is a better choice. Yeah, I mean, look, as far as we're concerned, oh, we like CBDC, they'll get me wrong. It's fine. It's a different thing. So, and that's what I was going to say, which is that the way we see the world is basically that it would really be unfortunate if you had a proliferation of fragmented networks that don't interoperate and communicate with one another. The value that needs to be delivered to the very people that badly need this is that if you use a wallet or you use any other wallet that you have an interoperability layer at the core of the network that you use. And that's the way the internet works. It would be unacceptable if you would use Gmail and you couldn't send an email to someone with Yahoo Mail. But this is currently the situation. If you use a wallet app today, you cannot send a payment outside of a wallet app. I think in Europe, and I have to give credit to the European Union for that, with SEPA, if you're in a Eurozone bank, you can send money to any other banks and it works quite well. But that's not true everywhere in the world. And so for us, really what matters is to figure out what is the right network to host those stablecoins or CBDCs. Of course, we have an opinion on that. I think we bring a good technological solution to the network itself. And I want to really make that distinction between the network and the assets that are running on top of the network, which I think could be issued by many different entities, whether it's central banks or the private sector in some cases. And I think that if we were to agree on a sort of standard and a way to move digital money around in this new era of stablecoins and digital currencies, then I think people win at the end of the day. And so that, to me, is really important. Benoit. I think there is no preset course. I mean, when you try to think of the future of the, let's call it the monetary ecosystem, right? That can be quite a lot of diversity. It has to be a mix of public and private solutions as the payment world has always been. And competition will be good, because that's in the first place a discussion on technology, how technology can help improve efficiency and financial inclusion. And technological change comes from competition and it comes from the private sector. It usually doesn't come from the public sector. Sorry to say that. So we need that kind of spur, that pressure coming from innovation in the private sector. But to kind of put it very simply, the more you move towards the core of the system, the more likely that you will see central bank money, because that's what provides stability to the system. And we care about systemic stability. We care about financial stability. And we've built a system that works very well, which is based on RTGS systems, real-time gross settlement systems, which are settled in central bank money. That has worked very well through all crisis over the last 20 years. That has never failed, contrary to other parts of the financial system, which have shown many, many shortcomings. That has not failed. So we want to keep that kind of stability at the core of the system. Now, when you move towards the front end of the system, from the back end of the system towards the front end of the system, which is solutions for customers, payment solutions, then there is a room for a lot of innovation and most of it, if not all of it, will be provided by private players. And it's fine. So I think just to push back a little, when we think of those use cases, cross-border payment efficiency and costs, financial inclusion, rooting out illicit finance, it's clear that public policy will have to be involved. Regulation will have to be involved. Minimally, regulation to prevent anti, to prevent money laundering, right? And regardless of whether it's digital or the physical world, you've got to regulate. It's not obvious that the public sector also needs to be the provider of either the infrastructure or the constructs on top of the infrastructure. So either provider of the rails or the constructs that run on the rails. It's not obvious. You need regulation, certainly. Just bear in mind that we do want to have an open and interoperable system nationally and especially internationally. Central bank digital currencies are not constructed to be interoperable. They're not necessarily interoperable. They're separate national stacks. So just bear that in mind that the distinction between public and private is not a distinction between open and closed. There are actually four quadrants there. And you want to be in the quadrant which is open and interoperable, well-regulated, but also one that encourages innovation, both in the rails as well as very importantly in the constructs. Beware of unintended consequences. And think about what happens not in peacetime, but in crisis. What happens when you have a loss of confidence in one bank or a few banks? If you have a central bank digital currency, I'd be fairly sure that this, you know, on the one hand it's very, especially if it's a retail currency, right? It's highly democratic. You can have highly democratic flight out of banks into the central bank, much more than you have in a normal banking system. So just recognize that there's that risk at times of crisis, that people will take their money out of commercial banks, out of their retail deposits and put it with a central bank. Second, think about it nationally as well. You know, one of the traditional problems that emerging countries have faced is, has to do with the fact that they, you know, the so-called original sin. You get very easy dollarization of your economy. Some digital currencies that are not your own, a non-native digital currency can make that dollarization, I don't mean the US dollar, but the equivalent of dollarization, much easier. Just bear that in mind. So think, when you think of the solutions, the design of solutions, think not just of peacetime, but about what happens when you run into difficulty, when countries or banks run into difficulty. So I just don't want to jump to a conclusion now. I think one way or another, you're going to need public regulation of both the rails as well as the constructs of the rails. You don't want to snuff out innovation. You don't want to crowd out innovation. And to the credit of the private sector, spurred both by new technologies as well as just entrepreneurial energies, we've seen a whole range of innovations that are providing for a much more inclusive financial system. And mere provision of a currency or a token doesn't actually take us very far. But what's happening now is that the constructs on top of the rails, the products, the constructs, are actually allowing for smart contracts. For instance, insurance contracts that allow for automatic triggers when you have bad weather or in an earthquake or the speed of the wind changes. Contracts that allow for bond payments to be made automatically into a council. When a bond is maturing, you get an automatic payment into a person's account. There are all sorts of efficiencies and ways of serving the ultimate customer. And that's because the private sector and innovation is operating. So don't snuff out innovation. So I say this just by way of caution. It's not obvious that the solution is for the public sector, central banks, being the agent of the public sector, to be the providers of either the rails or the products that run on the rails. It may be the solution in some countries where you have a very inadequately developed financial sector and you have a lot of rent being captured, but I just worry about going too far into the retail space. In-law, and then we'll turn to a different topic. No, I just wanted to emphasize very much the importance of international coordination on CBDC, both for reasons of stability and of efficiency. Efficiency, because we want CBDC done in any economy to be used for cross-border payments. Whenever we have an euro, an E-sterling, an E-fran, an EEN, and so on and so forth, we want that to be used in an effective way for remittances. We want payment providers to be able to plug in and provide better solutions also in developing economies, which is a major development theme. And so that matters for the efficiency of the system and for inclusion. And it also matters for stability because as Tharman just said, we don't want either cryptocurrencies or stable coins or even CBDC done in a large economy to undermine monetary sovereignty in smaller economies. So that would be a major theme for international cooperation. The IMF would work on it. I would expect this to be a major theme in international fora for the next years. These are wise words of caution. I think it would do us all well to consider not only building to edge cases, but thinking about the unintended consequences of any of these kinds of opportunities. But I wanna shift us a little bit. We've been implicitly focusing on currency as a means of exchange. But there are other very critical, I think, and important uses of currency as a means of method of sovereignty. And I mean sovereignty in two different ways. One is sort of the ability for governments to engage with each other. And this gets crudely described as the sanctions issue. But also as a means of celebrating or preserving culture. And that's often quite literal. I mean, in many countries, you literally have your sovereign, your royal printed on your money. But there are also just other sort of cultural aspects to that exchange of paper or coin cash that could lead to actually quite profound changes in the way that we think about interactions with each other. So I'd love to get comments from anyone on the panel about those concepts. Aldis Reff will start with you. Yeah, well, on this, of course, it's not a new discussion back in 1970s. Friedrich Hayek was speaking about denitization of money and competition among different private currencies. But I don't think we are at that stage, or at least not yet. And from that point of view, indeed, this aspect we didn't touch upon in previous discussions. But indeed, if we discuss, for example, global stablecoin projects, the question of monetary serenity and efficiency of monetary policy also comes into question. And that's where there were so many questions, say, on Libra projects, both from U.S. Federal Reserves and regulators, also from... Everyone. And European regulators. So clearly, that raises quite a number of serious questions. And there, in our approach, also in European Union, we clearly said that we differentiated between different small fintech crypto asset initiatives. They may have their own issues and some global initiatives which may quickly become systemically important. And then, of course, it requires quite a bit of more careful approach, also from the regulators and from the central bank's point of view. By the way, culture can change. It's very interesting what's happened in places like China or Kenya. We thought it'll be young people who sort of take very quickly to digital cash. It's amazing how quickly older people, the grandmothers, have taken to digital cash. And they are quick with it, maybe not as nimble with their fingers. But it's just the norm. It becomes the norm. And it's amazing how older people have taken to digital means. And it's more convenient to them. It's more secure. No one can knit your wallet. So culture changes. I think also culture changes when you fix a problem. And I think there are so many people that are strapped into cash economy today that if they have a window into the world's economy and the ability to digitize their money and have more opportunity, it changes their lives. And as a result, culture change happens really quickly when you solve a real problem for people. So let's get back to the financial inclusion point because this is often the first use case that everyone cites or the second depending I suppose on your ordering. And I want to draw the distinction again between what I called earlier the political poor or the kind of accredited poor, let's call it, that have identification, that have credentialism shift, and the invisible poor, those who seem to be beyond the reach of the system. We know that that population is still engaging primarily in cash exchange. Is it realistic to expect that the digital literacy, the kind of the infrastructural requirements that are needed to address that portion of the population, could that problems, those preconditions could be solved in a manner that would actually enable us to abandon paper or metal currency? Maybe if I may on this, of course financial exclusion is also a problem within European Union and we admit it and actually we have a, well, legislation now in place requiring basically banks to ensure that every European has access to basic banking services. So because indeed over the last years there have been lots of requirements put on banks in terms of capital requirements, in terms of anti-money laundering requirements and so on and a number of cases it led to the phenomena with which banks call the risking, but which in fact often ends as a financial exclusion. So from that point of view, what we are saying in Europe, no everyone as a physical person has right to how basic banking services to fight exactly this financial exclusion. Yeah, I think it's a complex discussion. There is no simple causality here. We've seen cases where technical change and in particular mobile payments have helped the poorest to kind of leapfrog over some of the hurdles they were facing in terms of financial inclusion, in particular bank accounts, right? And that's the case in particular in developing economies. We've seen other cases where technical change has kind of accelerated the penetration of bank accounts. That's the case in India with the Indian stack, for instance. And we might see cases where we still need cash to address part of the population, which just doesn't know how to use a smartphone. And that's okay, or is homeless and will never have a bank account, et cetera, et cetera. So we might, I think we've got to be quite flexible in terms of envisaging a future where we'll have different means of payments for different parts of the population and that will be in different ways across countries. So there is no single template for CBDC. We'll have to accept diversity because of cultural, different cultural approaches because of different financial systems, banked, unbanked, et cetera, et cetera. What we need to do is to have common principles because that's about the stability of the system and to have interoperability because we want the system to work as a system. But that said, within a country, there is a wide room for diversity. Absolutely, there's always a fitness for purpose should be paramount, Neha, yes. Yeah, I just want to echo that. There is no one size solution which is going to fit all and different countries are going to try different things and different techniques are going to work in different places. I do want to stress that it's very important to get the balance between the public sector and the private sector right. I would argue that our existing situation with very slow, expensive cross-border transactions is in part because we left a lot to the private sector that did not really get us where we need to be. So it's very important for the public sector to step up, to provide an option, to make sure that we have the right framework to consider very important issues that the private sector might not get to. For example, it's interesting to look back at what's happened with our internet today. There are a few very large companies which collect massive amounts of data on people and essentially surveil them even as they're walking around their own homes and cities. We need to make sure that something like this does not happen with financial transactions. It's very important to consider user sovereignty and user data and I'm very happy to hear that the European Commission is considering the right type of regulatory framework for financial transactions. That sounds like we've expressed some of the potential benefits. We've certainly heard some notes of caution and it sounds like we are in the beginning of a probably relatively long journey before we establish it for purpose in these different kinds of use cases in different environments. Before we open up for the audience for questions, I'll invite the panel to just give a final remark and we'll just go down the line and then I'll begin with you. So I think we, you know, I had to guess where we land up now that the public sector is focused on this issue. It'll be a hybrid system or hybrid systems. There will for sure be greater public regulation of both the infrastructure on which these payment systems are run as well as some of the constructs. Minimally to avoid money laundering but also just to ensure that you don't get too much rent capture. You will not necessarily see the public sector running the system but in some countries and if you take China there's a very unique situation where you already had two large private universes of payments and one of the reasons why the People's Bank of China has issued effectively a digital currency is really to provide a public option that doesn't avoid, that doesn't have information being lodged with third party providers and at low cost. So you'll have national circumstances like that but it seems to me that we should be thinking hard about innovation in the constructs that are made possible now by digital technologies, innovation that provides a better value for customers and it's not the public sector typically that does that. Preserving sovereignty is going to be the trickiest part of this game it seems to me. You can think of the financial stability, regulations required, anti-money laundering regulations and so on. Preserving monetary sovereignty is going to be a very important part of this. Be it with regard to private stable coins or some synthetic multi-currency stable coins or central bank digital currencies. Sovereignty of other countries is also going to be an issue. Well, just a very brief message from EU side. Well, from EU side we are open to financial innovation, financial technologies, we are willing to embrace it and we are willing to ensure that within EU it's possible to use a full scale of EU single market for FinTech for financial innovations. So later this year we'll be coming with an updated FinTech action plan to see what are the next steps in Europe as regards financial technologies but we want to embrace it while addressing the risks. So at WIS we'll keep bringing people together to make sure that whatever they do and however fast they want to do it or slowly they want to do it. They keep in mind the interest of the global system as a system and they keep in mind the consequences of what they're doing on global financial stability. And there is a risk of fragmentation and the global financial system is already fragmented enough, maybe it's getting more fragmented for various reasons. We don't want CBDC to be an additional source of fragmentation so that would be our priority. Thank you, Neha. Look, we're talking about the stability of the international monetary system and certainly applying technology as Tharman pointed out can have unintended consequences but I think it's incredibly important to have this conversation and it's wonderful to have these institutions stepping up at this level to have this conversation and to consider the possibilities. I'm very excited to see what happens next. Thank you, Neha. So look, for me, I'm an optimist otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing but I'm really encouraged by the dialogue. I feel that, you know, a year ago we weren't having the kind of conversations that I think will lead to a regulatory regime that would ensure that projects like ours and others can actually see the light of day with the proper framing of what is doable and what's not and do it in a responsible way that would actually ensure that we deliver the benefits that I think we can deliver without some of the unintended consequences that can stem from innovation. So I'm an optimist and I think that there's going to be a big change and a big revolution that will happen and that will benefit a lot of the people who are often left behind and also, you know, Tharmin, you mentioned programmable money, smart contracts. I'm actually really optimistic about the ability to really empower digital money and have a whole series and range of innovations around financial systems. Thank you. I think we have time for maybe one or two questions from the audience. I think we have a microphone we're going to run around. Yes, okay, let's go right here. Thank you. Beatrice Vader from CEPR. My question is to you, David, your optimism. The Libra project certainly has met with a lot of interest and also a lot of skepticism. So when you read the G20 report and the many, many concerns that are raised there, my question to you is, can you really keep up your optimism or more concretely, will Libra, will we have Libra in a year or two? What is your view there? So Benoit wrote the G20 report. G7, G7. The G7 reports, sorry. The G7 reports, yes. Yes, so Benoit was leading that effort and I think that all of the concerns that were raised in that report are very legitimate concerns and we have to address these concerns for a project like ours and many others to move forward and we're completely on board with that. And I think, you know, one of the things that was really misunderstood when we announced the project in June is that some people thought this is it. It's the fully baked product with all of envision with all of the things figured out and it wasn't. We wanted to start a conversation and that we did for sure. And we received a lot of feedback but also a tremendous amount of legitimate concerns that we have to address with practical solutions. And I speak with my Libra board seat hat on and I'd say that at the association, all of the members have come together, have made decisions and are starting to address these concerns with one voice, which wasn't possible before we had a full governance established and an ability for all members to participate in that process. So yes, I'm an optimist and I believe that we will address these concerns. We will have to make changes and that eventually we'll have an opportunity to start really, because the beginning of the journey is not now. The beginning of the journey is when this network comes to life and when there's an ability for various companies to start building products to serve consumers. And my hope is that this day will happen sooner rather than later. I have a final question, Yang. Very quickly, Yan Qing from East High Media Group. My question is to Central Banker and also former Central Banker. How are you concerned that the CBDC will lead to the kind of narrow banking which is this intermediary of the whole system? Is it hurdle that the Central Bank should move slowly on that direction? So what's the phrase? Make haste slowly. I think that should be the way we approach the sole issue. We should keep an open mind. I don't think we should rush to solutions. We should start by looking at the use cases and the problems. And we should be very aware of the fact that the public sector should get involved where they are public goods. And where possible, we should regulate and incentivize the private sector. I'm convinced that this system is going to be, is going to involve a lot more regulation than a destiny. It's going to be necessary for very obvious reasons to do with illicit finance, but it's also going to be necessary to ensure interoperability, to ensure that there's a global coordination and to ensure that there isn't a loss of monetary sovereignty. So it's going to be a more regulated system than it is today, but that doesn't necessarily mean the public sector is going to be the provider of the infrastructure or the digital tokens. So we've got to think it through for all the reasons Tharman just mentioned and also because as suggested by your question, this can have very profound consequences on the structure of the system and on the road of bonds versus non-bonds and on financial stability. So we've got to think through the consequences of the different models, wholesale, retail, et cetera. And so we're not going to rush. It's a long journey which is why it's starting now. It's actually, so sooner we start the better because it's a long journey. And I'll just add that from the forum's perspective, we agreed this is a very serious undertaking and we are committed to supporting public-private cooperation in this space. To that end, we earlier this week released a CVDC policy makers toolkit which we are piloting with the central banks of Uruguay, Thailand and Bahrain that provides an analytical framework for assessing is a CVDC appropriate for a particular environment.