Fundamental issues need to be addressed before stablecoins such as Facebook’s libra gain regulatory assent, according to the European Central Bank, although global standards in place today are already fit for accommodating transfers of value using new technology.

Klaus Löber, head of the oversight division at the ECB, said libra was known in regulatory circles as “the project that is not to be named”, and terms such as stablecoin were “genius marketing because they are neither stable nor a coin