•  Authorities have already taken significant steps to design a regulatory framework that could stimulate innovation while preserving financial stability. The European MiCA regulation is a necessary first response to regulate the use of crypto-assets and it needs to be implemented as soon as possible. However, let me stress the MiCA regulation is not an end in itself but rather the start of a process. Our regulatory framework will need to be adjusted on a regular basis to keep up with the development of DeFi. •  In addition, these responses from public authorities need to be coordinated at the international level, to avoid arbitrage across jurisdictions. International bodies have a central role to play in coordinating responses, notably the BIS and the FSB, but also the IMF and the OECD. Page 2/3  My third takeaway is that central banks could accompany usefully the tokenization of finance, by leveraging new technologies to provide central bank digital currencies, thereby improving the efficiency of securities settlement and payment systems. •  The discussion showed that this possible positive impact is not confined to retail payments. o A wholesale CBDC directly integrated on DLT could be used to settle tokenised assets, bringing the security of central bank money. In addition, a wholesale CBDC has the potential to improve cross-border payments. o But we need to properly measure the economic impacts and the associated risks. That is why we are working on it step by step, including through experimentation with private actors.
Conference Banque de France ”Opportunities and challenges of the tokenisation of finance: which role for central banks?”  Tuesday 27 September 2022  Concluding remarks by Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor  Let me first start by thanking you all for attending this conference, both online and in person. I believe this large audience speaks to the significance of the issues that we have discussed together today and the depth and quality of today’s exchanges, which covered a wide variety of topics, were impressive. It is a tall order to summarise such rich discussions in so little time. I will only try to highlight three lessons I take away from each of the roundtables and chart a possible way forward. The first lesson I take away from this conference is that we could be at a turning point in the development of the crypto-asset ecosystem. • Over the past few years, the crypto-asset landscape has experienced a significant growth, buoyed in part by the low interest rate environment. It has expanded its initial scope and started offering more sophisticated products, getting increasingly complex and interwoven with traditional finance, with the emergence of DeFi. • However, recent tensions in the crypto-asset ecosystem, amidst a normalisation of monetary policy, raise questions about (i) first, its correlation with other types of risky assets and (ii) second, their sensitivity to changes in the monetary policy stance. The ongoing stress in the crypto-asset market is also altering the dynamics of the ecosystem, sparking bankruptcies and leading toward greater concentration.