4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Third, I would like to thank Thomas Steffen, to name just one of the colleagues at the Ministry of Finance and at BaFin, for the particularly close and trusting working relationship over the past years. Thomas, we touched base regularly, and our shared views on many issues benefited our joint endeavours.
Blockchain-based technologies offer up the chance of simplifying complex intermediation processes for payment and settlement activities. Virtually all payment service providers are therefore currently looking for ways to apply this technology. Its use in payment transactions is an obvious choice, as the cryptocurrency bitcoin has already been created for this purpose. But does it make sense to use blockchain in this of all areas?