We have approached the market for consultation about this. As regards the instant settlement of payments in central bank money, this is a service which is now being demanded and the technology for which is available. For reasons of efficiency, the Riksbank should thus ensure that it is delivered. At the same time, settlement should be made in central bank money for security reasons. I am therefore of the opinion that we should decide, as soon as possible, to offer instant settlement of payments in central bank money. As I mentioned previously, we, at the Riksbank, are currently analysing whether the infrastructure for this needs to be located within Sweden’s borders. Economies of scale speak in favour of placing it with the ECB’s system TIPS. 32 Preliminary calculations indicate that this alternative would also be competitive from a cost perspective. It would also probably be advantageous to join the ECB's system from a security perspective as this has a high level of security. At the same time, emergency preparedness reasons suggest our own Swedish system or at least that a domestic backup alternative should be available. The drawback is that a completely domestic solution risks becoming very expensive. 33  Concluding comments Let me sum up and round off. Money has arisen in different ways in various cultures to make people's day-to-day lives easier.
However, at present, we have too few details around these plans to be able to express an opinion on it. What we see here is the ongoing centralisation of payment systems generated by globalisation. There has been a movement within the euro area from national systems and a fundamentally fragmented market to centralised, cross-border systems. Deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s contributed towards the integration of the banking market in the EU. And now the same thing is happening to the payments-infrastructure side. The European Commission intends to propose an amendment of the EC regulation on cross-border payments in euro to reduce fees for cross-border transactions in all member states and thereby facilitate trade and contribute towards increased competition. Other initiatives are also taking place on the EU level to develop the market for electronic payments and create better conditions for secure and efficient payments. The new regulations will entail a gradual adaptation of Swedish payment services to EU standards. Crypto-currencies are not money Another new trend is the new crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple, to name a few. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 and is still the most commonly-used crypto-currency. Bitcoin was created by networks of users. Participants who pool their hardware resources to verify the payments made are rewarded with newly-created Bitcoins. The size of the rewards declines over time in a way that means there cannot be more than 21 million Bitcoins.