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France's finance minister said Tuesday that strong guarantees were needed over the use of cryptocurrencies after Facebook announced it was leaping into the market with its own digital money. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, whose government has also initiated a new tax on digital giants like Facebook that has angered the United States, said such digital money could never replace sovereign currencies. "If Facebook wants to create an instrument for transactions, why not? But there is no question that this can become a sovereign currency," he told Europe 1 radio, saying a "limit" had to be set. "It cannot and must not become a sovereign currency, with all of attributes of a currency" such as the capacity to issue sovereign debt and serve as a reserve currency. "The aspect of sovereignty must stay in the hands of states and not private companies which respond to private interests," Le Maire added. There need to be "guarantees" so that "this transaction instrument is not misused, for ...

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