Cipollone (ECB): «Blockchain doesn’t put stability in danger» | EUROtoday

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Blockchain expertise continues to be in an exploratory section within the monetary sector in Europe however widespread diffusion in wholesale funds is predicted within the coming years and for that reason “central banks cannot remain idle”.

This was said by ECB member Piero Cipollone when opening the proceedings of the thirtieth Assiom Forex congress in Genoa, in response to which «a potential large-scale adoption of such improvements might compromise the system's position as an anchor to ensure the effectivity and stability of our system of funds”.

«Currently – he notes – only around 22% of European banks use it and another 22% are testing or experimenting with it. However, most operators involved in the Eurosystem survey expect significant use of DLT for wholesale payments and securities settlement in the next five to ten years.”

«The speedy progress of digital applied sciences has aroused broad market curiosity and stimulated experimentation – states Cipollone – The expertise primarily based on DLT (digital illustration of economic or actual property on distributed ledger platforms) is promising because it might improve the effectivity of operations for a few of the conventional makes use of and allow new use circumstances”.

In his speech, Cipollone underlined how caution is necessary «so that such innovations do not compromise the stabilizing role of central bank money in the settlement of transactions between financial institutions. Central banks must therefore be ready for a possible wide adoption of new technologies and keep pace with their evolution, as they have done in the past.”