Benoit Coeure, a member of the European Central Bank's Executive Board, said financial control officials need to act swiftly to prepare for the introduction of the Libra stablecoin announced by Facebook in latest weeks.
Coeure indicated that allowing the creation of fresh financial services and asset classes in a regulatory emptiness scenario is irresponsible: "We have to function faster than we have been able to do so to date." According to Coeure, digital asset creation has revealed the gaps in the present economic laws, also highlighting the banks ' slowness in adopting fresh technologies.
"All these initiatives are helpful alarm bells for regulators and officials as they encourage us to increase a number of issues and enable us to enhance our way of working," Coeure said.
Until now, the ECB has retained a cautious attitude to crypto-assets, but has shown some skepticism, such as in the statements made by Ardo Hansson, Member of the Executive Council of the European Central Bank and President of the Estonian Central Bank, who described cryptocurrencies as a "full bunch of nonsense" in recent months.
However, Libra seems to have shaken the authorities and institutions profoundly: in latest weeks, following Facebook's announcement, the U.S. House of Representatives ' Financial Services Committee has asked Facebook and its associates to stop stablecoin growth. A request that arises as a consequence of pressure to enforce a moratorium from different organizations for Congress.