France will push for the European Union to adopt a regulatory framework on cryptocurrencies similar to the one France brought in at a national level, the country’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire said, according to various media reports. Le Maire spoke about why he believes in the emerging tech at the Paris Blockchain conference.
Excerpts from speech by Bruno Le Maire, France’s minister of Economy and Finance, Paris Blockchain Conference, April 15 2019. Translated from French.
I believe in the blockchain, I believe in this technology and therefore I believe in the need to regulate it correctly so that it can develop in the best possible conditions. Why has France decided through its public authorities to take this technology seriously and give it all the means to develop? First of all because beyond technological innovation, there is in the blockchain an aspiration policy of decentralizing trust and replacing a vertical authority with collective certification.
Everyone sees today that it is one of the important challenges that restore confidence, restore authority and that confidence it can come simply the collective opinion of citizens who trust each other through this chain. It’s not an anarchist or libertarian utopia as some try to describe it, it is a trust which is built on a deeply democratic basis.
The second reason is that blockchain is a competitive model that I also believe deeply because it stands in principle against monopolies. We can see today that this issue of the monopolistic situation of some digital giants has become of financial point of view, from the technological point of view, from the economic point of view, but also from the political point of view, an absolutely major subject and that the Blockchain, by reintroducing the competition, perhaps one of the elements that helps to fight against these monopolies and this economic domination. It’s one of many things.
What we decided on the taxation of the digital giants and that I went to explain to Washington, a few days ago, in the context of the IMF’s international spring meetings, is also a way to restore justice and equity in situations that are monopolistic. But thanks to the blockchain protocol, what I see is that the cards are broken, that the digital power is rebutted, since thanks to the blockchain protocol, users have the faculty to create, to animate their own network of transfer of money, of commerce, of services without intermediation of any platform. So the blockchain is a competitive freedom in a world that tends to become monopolistic.
Finally, the last reason, blockchain will have an impact on our businesses and that I prefer that France has a head start in these technologies rather than being late. Take the example of finance, everyone sees well that the financial markets are built on a very complex infrastructure building: the market places, the clearing houses, the settlement systems. With one purpose: to guarantee the total security of transactions.
I believe that the blockchain protocol will eventually replace these infrastructures and provide a complete and decentralized solution that will enable transactions to be made, to save and store value. This revolution, it is already running and I welcome from the Liquid Share Place initiative that uses Blockchain Ethereum and in Paris to modernize our market infrastructures.