” If a sterling retail stablecoin wishes to run at scale in the UK, then we will strongly consider the requirement for an entity to be included in the UK.”
Such a requirement might affect prepare for Libra.
In April, the Geneva-based Libra Association, which will provide and govern the planned stablecoin, stated it would use stablecoins based on a still-undecided line-up of private currencies, citing those based upon the dollar, euro and sterling as possible examples.
LONDON (Reuters) – Financial regulators should prevent playing catch up with digital payment approaches like stablecoins and crypto-assets, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said on Thursday.
Stablecoins are still a reasonably specific niche corner of the cryptocurrency world that barely featured on policymakers programs until Facebook unveiled its Libra stablecoins last year.
Financial regulators and main banks feared Libra– prepared as a stablecoin backed by a large mixture of currencies and federal government financial obligation– might destabilise financial policy and help with cash laundering, with some threatening to obstruct it.
” If stablecoins are to be extensively utilized as a method of payment, they need to have comparable requirements to those that are in location today for other types of payment types and the forms of cash transferred through them,” Bailey said in a speech to the Brookings Institution.
Existing regulatory standards should be examined and upgraded where needed due to stablecoins, he stated, calling for a clear G20 required for standard-setting bodies to refresh or clarify standards.
Any stablecoin based upon the pound that was launched in Britain should meet requirements comparable to those applied to banks, Bailey said. The company of such a coin would need to be based in Britain, he included.
Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Tom Wilson and Alison Williams
