Australia is unlikely to be running any cryptocurrency-based payments systems any time in the foreseeable future, if the RBA stays firm in its belief that regulations need to be in place first.This was the considered opinion from Michele Bullock, RBA assistant governor, financial system, during a three-a-side debate at the Australian payments Network's annual conference in Sydney over the question:  "Is Australia ready for digital currency innovation such as [Facebook's mooted cryptocurrency] Libra?" Bullock was blunt: "No". Then continued: "The question really should be: do we need an innovation like Libra in Australia?She was reacting to comments from Emma Poposka, managing director of bronID, an anti-money laundering tech services provider, who had made the point that there is not much difference between digital payments methods and the use of cryptocurrencies for payments."All digital payments should be protected by some type of encryption, yet the same problems levelled at cryptocurrencies - for instance, lack of security and vulnerability to being hacked - are likely to hit fiat currencies and banking systems," Poposka argued."People here will be aware of Westpac's breach of AML/CTF regulations, and CBA - but I don't want to name names," she said, generating much laughter from the attendees. "And PayPal - all [established players] are vulnerable to the same threats.""We should be open to the idea of experimenting with such financial innovations."The key point about money is that it requires trust. What we've observed, at least with the first innovation with cryptocurrencies, broadly - and Bitcoin is a good example - is huge price volatility. It's really an asset, not a currency at all.'Stable coins' are the next innovation, and tried to settle down the price volatility to give people trust that the same money they put in would be the same sort of money they got out.The point is, Libra will still have exchange rate volatility, relative to any individual currency. The regulators have been interested in these digital assets, probably more from a taxation and anti-money laundering perspective.But even if Libra doesn't succeed, something else will come along, so the regulators have to focus on this because:•    if the issue of price volatility is solved, the currency may well become widely used; and•    if it is backed by a large network and there is a large take-up, the currency could become systemic very quickly - which poses a threat to financial stability.A recent report, written for G7 technocrats, conceded that such currencies might provide quicker cross-border payments, but also raised questions over legal certainty, money laundering, terrorist financing,  data privacy, efficiency and integrity, consumer investment and protection, trust and taxation."If Facebook and the Libra Foundation want to run banking-type services, they need to accept that they will be regulated like everyone else. But we're not ready for them as we have to decide how we're going to regulate them."The G7 has already said these currencies cannot be launched until the regulatory issues have been addressed and will not allow an uneven playing field, created by disintermediation