Yana BermanDuring a press conference on Thursday November 12, Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), revealed that the regulator is planning to increase efforts in digital currencies to get "ahead of the curve" on stablecoins.
Lagarde acknowledged that central banks around the globe are mostly interested in this particular area of innovation. She mentioned Canada and Britain among the countries that are actively exploring digital currencies.
Lagarde revealed that the ECB is going to establish major objectives for the regulator's special task force focused on digital currencies by mid-2020.
She also stressed that stablecoins look more innovative to the ECB than Bitcoin, and urged the officials to try to be "ahead of the curve" if other countries will start working on stablecoins. Lagarde said that there was an obvious demand to which the banks should respond.
The ECB has been debating the issuance of central bank digital currencies and stablecoins, pegged to fiat currencies, for quite a while.
For instance, in November the institution, pushed by Facebook's Libra project, claimed it was working on the technicalities of a digital currency and would present its plans to European Union (EU) governments in the near future.
However, later in December EU finance ministers agreed that private digital currencies such as Facebook's Libra, as opposed to the bank-controlled ones, pose the certain threat and should not be allowed in EU.
