During the Jackson Hole symposium held on August 28, 2026, a member of the ECB executive board made an unprecedented appeal. According to Isabel Schnabel, central banks must adopt blockchain in order to preserve their role in the financial system. This position is reshuffling the cards for institutional crypto in Europe. But not only that! It could also place the continent at the forefront of tokenization.
In brief
- Isabel Schnabel calls on central banks to issue their currencies directly on the blockchain.
- Schnabel judges stablecoins incapable of replacing base money as the ultimate settlement asset.
- Pontes is expected in September 2026 to connect blockchain platforms to TARGET services.
- Appia must define the architecture of the European tokenized market, with a plan expected for 2028.
- The European trials processed around €1.6 billion with 64 participants across nine jurisdictions.
“Central money must go on-chain”: what the ECB really says
Isabel Schnabel’s speech is a direct response to paper by Darrell Duffie on tokenized finance. According to her, central bank reserves should be native assets on distributed ledgers, not simple off-chain counterparties.
To take full advantage of tokenization, central banks must also go on-chain.
Concretely, this means that the central currency would be issued in the form of programmable tokens on a DLT (distributed ledger technology) infrastructure. The objective: to enable atomic and programmed settlement via smart contracts.
Isabel Schnabel thus distinguishes three technical options :
- issue tokenized reserves directly on a programmable register;
- connecting current payment systems to tokenized platforms via bridges;
- entrust this tokenization to a private intermediary.
The head of the ECB nevertheless shows a preference for the first option. The reason is that it allows the blockchain to make central bank money truly programmable.
The Pontes and Appia projects, the ECB’s crypto roadmap to move to blockchain
According to Schnabel, the Pontes project should see the light of day in September 2026. The first objective of this gateway: to connect blockchain platforms to the Eurosystem’s TARGET services. Ultimately, payments will be made directly to a blockchain platform operated by the Eurosystem himself with:
- smart contracts;
- continuous operation (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).
The Appia project, for its part, is intended to be a long-term project. It will design the architecture, technical standards as well as the legal framework of a true European tokenized asset market. A full plan is expected for 2028.
The recently published figures make it possible to concretely measure the progress of the project:
- Interoperability tests between DLT platforms and traditional settlement infrastructures have already made it possible to process around 1.6 billion euros spread across 64 participants from 9 jurisdictions.
- Since 2021, European issuers have placed nearly €4 billion in blockchain-based instruments.
- Since January 27, 2026, tradable assets issued via DLT have been eligible for Eurosystem credit operations.
Another central point of Schnabel’s speech: stablecoins
Isabel Schnabel highlights a crucial element when his intervention :
Central bank reserves remain superior to stablecoins as the ultimate settlement asset.
According to her, a settlement asset must satisfy two criteria:
- absolute security: no credit, liquidity or redemption risk
- elasticity of supply: ability to increase liquidity in times of stress
Certainly, stablecoins are well designed. However, they cannot expand their offer like a central bank. In times of panic, only the sovereign issuer can massively inject liquidity.
That’s not all! The ECB also fears a fragmentation scenario. If each DLT platform develops its own “wrapper” of reserves via a private omnibus account, there is a risk of recreating a pyramid of private claims. This phenomenon occurred before the creation of the Fed in 1913.
Decryption: stablecoins will remain complements. They will never replace central currency in wholesale settlement.
Blockchain and crypto: a global signal that is reshaping finance
Schnabel’s speech at Jackson Hole is part of a global movement. The fact is that financial institutions are already moving trillions in tokenized value on blockchain infrastructures. Each signal that a G7 central bank agrees to settle its own onchain currency reinforces the legitimacy of this infrastructure, which the crypto market has used for more than fifteen years.
For investors, this development is of particular importance. Of course, it does not directly set the price of bitcoin. That being said, it redefines the perimeter within which crypto and traditional finance will coexist.
The ECB is known to be a conservative institution. If it is running to avoid being “disintermediated” by private tokenization, it is because the debate is now the same as that which takes place in the meeting rooms of central banks.
One thing is therefore certain: the ECB has just reached an important milestone. Isabel Schnabel’s appeal has just transformed a technical subject into an issue of sovereignty. The question is therefore no longer whether blockchain will be adopted, but how to position yourself in this ecosystem. File to follow!
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