Cryptocurrencies are useful as long as they are issued by central banks - French central banker

• Francois Villeroy supports thee idea of central bank-issued digital money.
• The governor of Bank of France believes that digital money may be useful in some countries.

Digital currencies cannot be private and should be issued and controlled by central banks, according to Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau. As cited by Reuters, Villeroy admitted on Saturday, that cryptocurrencies could be useful as a substitute for cash transactions in some countries; however, the private money is a no-go anyway. 

Spurred by the rise of cryptocurrencies and Facebook’s plans to launch its Libra currency, central banks worldwide are looking into the possibility of issuing digital money to prevent the loss of state control over money.

Notably, several. global central banks have recently joined forces to study the use of cases of central bank-issued digital currencies. They will share the experience and promote the research in this area.

In a separate development, central banks of Hong Kong and Thailand announced a joined project that will help to facilitate payments between the countries, while Japanese lawmakers suggested creating digital yen to keep up with China and private initiatives such as Facebook's Libra project.

Meanwhile, Villeroy emphasized that his proposal had nothing to do with Libra, instead, it was a response to fast-evolving technology and growing demand for digital currency.

In some northern European countries, notably Sweden and the Netherlands, the use of banknotes is falling extremely quickly and they are wondering whether we need to give citizens the right to digital money that is no longer a physical bank note but which has the same quality, notably the security of a central bank, he told France Inter radio.

He also confirmed that central banks would be engaged in experiments with digital money and this question would be researched by the Eurosystem eurozone central banks.