Shifts in consumption patterns, such as the growth of e-commerce, are fueling a steady decline in the use of cash in transactions, while the use of electronic payment instruments and systems is increasing, rooted in the current surge in global digitalization, along with the development of internet-based technologies and multifunctional technological devices. 1/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  However, the decline of cash payments needs to be put into context because, if the downwards trend is undisputable – the volume of banknotes returned by the public to cash processing firms fell by over 10% between 2012 and 2017, -banknotes still dominate face-to-face transactionsparticularly small-value ones. Banknotes remain the main payment instrument in Europe by number of transactions, accounting for 79% of the latter in the euro area and 68% in France (54% and 28% respectively in value). The increase in the use of electronic payment instruments and systems is developing along four different pathways. First, the sophistication of internet technologies and devices for transactions: the number of channels used to initiate and accept payments has increased significantly. Contactless payments and mobile payments are some examples. Second, the availability of payment services at any time: payment services are becoming more available, ignoring physical borders and time constraints to satisfy customer demand for instant, continuous and uniform payment services, as economic agents become ever more mobile. Instant payments in Europe are for example designed to be executed in less than 15 seconds compared to the duration of 24H to 48H for traditional payment orders.
Namely: - the coexistence and competition of central bank money and private money (mainly so far commercial bank money) as settlement assets - the anchor role of central bank money My answer to this question would be to reaffirm and therefore preserve those core features  which have served well the public interest of financial and monetary stability. But this does not mean that we should aim for the status quo both in terms of regulatory and oversight frameworks and in terms of services that central banks should offer in providing central bank money as a settlement asset in payment systems. 2 - A number of risks to which crypto-assets payment arrangements are exposed are  familiar and in this respect, existing regulatory and oversight frameworks only require to be adapted to address them. To that end, three key issues to be considered are the legal qualification of crypto- assets, venues used to exchange them and the conditions under which a crypto-asset can be exchanged into another one, in commercial bank money or in central bank money. France has already moved into that direction with the adoption of a regulatory regime for 4/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  blockchains, tokens and ICOs. After a Blockchain Ordinance authorizing some specific security tokens to be seen as securities when they are not registered in a central security depository, France adopted in May this year a legislation on crypto-assets, referred to as the PACTE bill.