Several countries have already gone down this route, including China in 2013 and Russia in 2017. A third option, and the one that has so far been the preferred  response in Europe and France to innovations with the potential to change the payment services market, is to establish appropriate regulations that make it possible to reconcile two key imperatives: 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  First, address the risks that I mentioned, notably with a view to ensuring an adequate level of protection for participants, whether they be investors or consumers. Second, preserve the potential for technological innovation offered by crypto-assets. These two imperatives are mutually beneficial. Adopting a framework that protects  participants in the real economy will help to increase their confidence in the mechanisms associated with crypto-assets, thereby promoting growth in the new assets. 1. If we opt for creating a regulatory framework, what should go into it? That is precisely the topic of a number of debates currently being conducted around France’s new PACTE Bill. The proposed legislation includes an approach to crypto-assets based on two pillars. The first specifically addresses the question of ICOs, proposing an optional labelling system. Under this system, a company planning an ICO would be able to ask the AMF to label the offering. This optional label would give the offering greater credibility and reassure potential token buyers about the serious nature of the project and the associated financing arrangements. The second pillar concerns providers of crypto-asset services.
The reason is that a crisis in a bank can very quickly spread to the rest of the financial system, which can in turn have very costly consequences for the economy as a whole. I shall explain how this comes about. The banks’ traditional business model is to function as an intermediary between, on the one hand households and companies needing credit to buy homes or to get business projects started, and on the other hand households and companies wanting to hold money in accounts for transactions or savings. The banks thus help to transform savings into investment in the economy and contribute to more efficient mediation of payments. This is of course beneficial to the economy as a whole. At the same time, this business model entails significant risks. To put it simply, this is because the bank's assets consist of long-term loans that cannot be quickly and easily converted into cash, while the bank's funding is largely shortterm and volatile. Normally, this does not entail any problems, but if for some reason doubts were to arise with regard to the bank’s ability to pay, the funding could be withdrawn very quickly, and the bank could be forced to default on its payments. Problems in one bank can have serious domino effects As the banks are often interlinked with one another and often have similar types of exposure, problems in one bank can very quickly have serious domino effects in the rest of the financial system.