MariusFebruary on Nostr: The paragraph below is copied from a speech given by Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the ...

The paragraph below is copied from a speech given by Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, in January 2018. Later that year, Swiss citizens were going to vote on the introduction of sovereign money ([Vollgeldinitiative](https://www.vollgeld-initiative.ch/english/)).

Reading the speech six years later, two things spring to mind:

(a) The concerns he enumerated with transitioning to sovereign money, such as the need for central banks to supply commercial banks with liquidity by taking assets of those banks onto their balance sheets, happened anyway (QE) regardless of whether sovereign money was introduced or not (it was not).
(b) when we substitute "sight deposit accounts at the central bank" with "Bitcoin," the speech is expanded onto a global scope

Bitcoin is successfully and gradually introducing to the world what the Swiss initiative unsuccessfully aimed for in 2018.

[The paragraph from Thomas Jordan's speech on 16-JAN-2018](https://www.bis.org/review/r180118c.pdf):

"Furthermore, granting broader access to sight deposit accounts at the central bank carries risks for financial stability. In periods of heightened uncertainty, the public would likely convert large amounts of their sight deposits at commercial banks into digital central bank money. Sight deposits with commercial banks can already be converted into central bank money today, namely into cash. However, holding cash is comparatively expensive and inconvenient. In a scenario where the public is granted access to digital central bank money, the SNB would probably have to provide the banks with liquidity (‘lender of last resort’) more frequently and on a larger scale than is the case today. In return, it would have to take assets of the banks and the associated risks onto its own balance sheet."

(the speech is quite insightful and IMHO very clear and open about how money works)