French banking authorities urge to further explore the blockchain technology to understand its comparative advantages and potential dangers for financial stability. Earlier, Polish officials also turned to the subject.

French Central Bank has issued a new report on financial stability in the era of digitalisation that explores new risks in the field, suggests regulations needed to mitigate these risks and assesses the overall transformation of the financial sector.

Blockchain is mentioned a number of times in the subsection on digitalisation of financial services that poses a potential threat to financial stability. Describing the safety of transactions issue, the report states that blockchain changes the conditions under which central banks can guarantee transactions security.

According to the report, decentralised exchanges can influence existing methods of storing assets and managing financial arrangements. The authors urge to analyse a number of aspects to comprehend the technology’s potential, such as security, costs, blockchain's capacity to process large amounts of simultaneous transactions and economic interest to cut the middleman. The report tells that the Financial Stability Board at the Bank of France is responsible for tracking the initiatives on the blockchain technology application and analysing its impact on financial security.

Earlier, the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs started to consider the impact of bitcoin and blockchain on the digitalisation of state services. In February 2016, the Ministry issued a strategic paper where it described the cryptocurrency and the technology behind it as a development accelerating the development of the sector, but having a potential to compromise its security at the same time. As a possible response, the Ministry recommended, among all, to analyse the emerging opportunities for the public good and to keep citizens protected from the technology-related risks.

Anna Lavinskaya