First, thank you for welcoming me here, General and all of you. I believe this is the first time, at least for me and even for my predecessors, that we are participating in a strategic forum at the Military School. I think that says something about the times we live in and the missions we accomplish. We are all in the same boat. We are all on board for strategic, but also economic and monetary sovereignty. That brings me directly to the question you asked. First, note that in terms of monetary sovereignty, the greatest success of Europe in 30 years is the euro. I imagine we'll come back to that, and fortunately we have the euro to face the difficult times we are living through. Then, on top of that comes a technological change, which is this tokenization. In general, the word is technical and I'm not sure you're very familiar with it. Token in English is a 'jeton' and we haven't found good translations in French because 'jetonisation' wouldn't be very pretty. If there are tokenization specialists here, I apologize in advance to them, but to give a simplified translation, it's a technology that, thanks to blockchain, allows for much greater security of financial transactions. The great advantage of tokenization, which is secured by blockchain, is that you can simultaneously exchange a financial flow. It's very difficult to do with two hands and a microphone. Anyway, you'll understand. A financial flow which is a settlement in currency, and in the opposite direction, a delivery of securities or of legal property instruments or contracts. That might seem a bit abstract, but I can testify that on financial markets, for example, I don't know if there are certain specialists among you, this issue of simultaneous settlement and delivery, having both payment and delivery of the security, is a technical challenge, and there are settlement and delivery specialists. There are people for whom that is their job. Why? Because at the heart of it is the question of trust. If I'm the one paying, I don't want to pay before receiving the security, and if I'm the one selling, I don't want to deliver the security before being paid. Forgive me for putting it so simply, but that is the revolution of tokenization. It's a revolution of trust, thanks to blockchain, that allows for the simplification of many economic circuits. If I dare an image, and forgive me because it's very imperfect, notaries are these trusted third parties and they provide many other things. They provide advice, etc. But for the part, I would say, of direct trust, tokenization is a form of electronic notary. I cited the example of financial markets. There are undoubtedly many other application cases. However, today this technique essentially translates into what we call stablecoins, which are often in dollars and issued by American entities. That's where the sovereignty question you raised comes in. The good news is that there isn't only the dollar stablecoin response. There are various ways to proceed with tokenization, and we obviously need to find a European way.
It's a risk, but it's a risk we can avoid and prevent. That, I believe, is a very important axis of our action as a central bank. First, I introduced, we introduced together the term stablecoin regarding tokenization, another English term, so 'pièces stables'. You've heard of this vast family of cryptos that we talk about a lot. In fact, it's a very heterogeneous family. On one side, you have hyper-speculative assets like Bitcoin. We'll wish it good luck, but I believe it's an asset that doesn't have much economic interest and is extremely risky. It's not our subject of conversation. But the other branch of cryptos, and that will occupy us a lot, using this famous blockchain tokenization technique. Stablecoins say 'I've created this electronic token but it's worth $1 or maybe it will be worth €1.' It has a fixed value, a huge difference with Bitcoin which is very speculative. And that's what makes it interesting. While we can have doubts about the economic future of Bitcoin, it's a speculative instrument, I believe stablecoins will develop quite a bit. The challenge for us is: will it develop only with private actors, non-European actors, essentially American, but there are others elsewhere too? And besides, stablecoins that are almost exclusively in dollars and not in euros, which would undermine the great conquest of sovereignty we achieved with the euro. The fact is, consider the starting picture: the outstanding amount of stablecoins today worldwide is $250 or $300 billion, which is a fairly significant sum, but if I compare it to financial flows, it's negligible. In that outstanding amount, 99% is in dollars. So we can say, there's the American domination, it's there. Yes, in the starting picture, in my opinion, not at all in the rest of the film, it's up to us to write it. Why are 99% in dollars today? Because the main use of stablecoins, still very embryonic, is to bridge with crypto-assets like Bitcoin. If I have Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever and I want to convert it into hard cash, I generally go through stablecoins. Since this crypto activity is essentially in dollars, the use case today is in dollars. So, what is the European response? Because that's what counts. First, you spoke of the risk of privatization of money, and we at the central bank are obviously very sensitive to that. The job of the European Central Bank, of the Bank of France, is to issue public money, which is a bit of an anchor. And so we are working very actively to issue a central bank digital currency that is tokenized. I don't know if you're aware, but until now, the central bank money you can use exists. It's the banknote. It's the paper form of money. When the Bank of France was created in 1800, it was to issue this banknote, which was a great novelty. Simply, what was a great technological innovation in 1800 is no longer one in 2026. And so, issuing a digital central bank currency is the next technological leap. We are working on it very actively with the ECB, and there will be both, you've probably heard of the digital euro project for individuals, which we are for retail use, and then next to that, which is talked about less but is at least as important, we will issue a central bank euro for financial market and interbank uses that I mentioned earlier. And there, I have good news for European sovereignty that is not known at all. The digital euro, it takes a bit more time, it's a bit more complicated to set up. It requires authorization from the European Parliament, etc. So it's probably by 2029. The other tokenized central bank euro for financial transactions, it's starting this year. The European Central Bank will be the first to issue a tokenized currency, the first in the world, starting next summer. It's the project we call Pontes. So that's the public layer. And then there's the private layer, because you also use private money when you use your credit card, your mobile, you make transfers online, it's from your bank account, that's private money. There, we absolutely must avoid European banks being left behind in relation to this tokenization movement. And so we are pushing a lot, and I see with pleasure the movement accelerating a lot in recent months. We're talking, in the current news, about having not only dollar stablecoins but euro stablecoins issued by European banks. There's a consortium that has been created, and where there's a French bank, I'll name it, called Société Générale, which has issued a euro stablecoin. And then there are other forms of tokenization, what we call tokenized bank deposits. I don't need to go into technical details, but you see there's no fatality that this tokenization revolution belongs only to private money in dollars. What is true is that Mr. Trump, when he arrived in January 2025, was not mistaken about the importance of the question you're asking. One of the first executive orders he signed, he arrived on January 20th, on the 23rd. We've forgotten all that because so much has happened with the new American administration that we have the impression that one idea chases another. But there, there was something quite rational from the American point of view. He took an executive order to greatly favor dollar stablecoins and he said I want to make the United States the great country of private tokenization. That's his right. But our duty on the European side is to develop a European response, so the public layer and then the private layer with the banks.
Thank you very much for this explanation on tokenization, you've made it perfectly understandable. I'd like to come back to that. It's a great compliment you're paying me. The public will say if I deserve it, because usually the word tokenization is extremely scary, including, I'll be honest, we have some non-specialists inside the Bank of France. So we're always looking for a translation. Today, it's at the heart of our reflections here. I'd like to continue by talking about the euro. You alluded earlier to our common currency which was created 27 years ago. At the start, we remember, it was a small club with 11 countries. A club that has expanded over time. The last country to enter the euro club is Bulgaria. Now, we count 21 members. So it's a success. A testament, moreover, to this European monetary sovereignty. But Governor, I'd like to know what do we do with this sovereignty? What is it useful for?
