According to Fixygen, the European Central Bank must begin working with blockchain infrastructure itself in order to preserve the role of central bank money in the new financial system, said ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel.
According to her, central banks must effectively “go on-chain” by providing tokenized central bank money for settlements involving assets on distributed ledgers.
The ECB is already developing the Pontes and Appia projects.
Pontes is intended to connect the existing European payment infrastructure with blockchain platforms, while Appia is exploring a longer-term architecture for a tokenized financial market.
This is a separate project from the retail digital euro.
The main target audience consists of banks, funds, and financial companies that need to settle transactions involving tokenized bonds, funds, and other assets using real central bank money.
If such an infrastructure becomes operational, blockchain will cease to be exclusively a cryptocurrency technology and will, in fact, become one of the settlement layers of the traditional capital market.
The China Banking Regulatory Commission has unofficially instructed several local brokers to suspend activities in the field of real asset tokenization (RWA) in Hong Kong, Reuters reports, citing sources.
According to the agency, the move is aimed at strengthening risk control. The regulator wants to ensure that RWA projects are based on real business and are not used as speculative instruments.
Beijing’s initiative contrasts with Hong Kong’s policy, which has recently been actively promoting itself as a global center for digital assets. Mainland China banned cryptocurrency trading and mining in 2021, but at the same time, in August, it became known that the Chinese government was exploring the possibility of legalizing the use of yuan-backed stablecoins.
According to RWA.xyz, the global market for tokenized real assets is currently valued at $28 billion.
