ECB conference discusses the future of money and digital central bank currencies

The European Central Bank (ECB) hosted a conference titled “The Future of Money” on October 1, 2026, at the Bank of England in London. Isabel Schnabel, a member of the ECB Executive Board, delivered a keynote address.

The conference covered topics including the advantages of tokenisation for faster, safer, and smarter settlement, such as programmability and atomicity of transactions. It also discussed how tokenisation could foster integration of European financial infrastructures.

Further discussions included the structure of modern fiat monetary systems, which are built on a two-tier model involving public settlement assets and private settlement assets. The ECB highlighted the potential for central banks to expand liquidity elastically during financial stress and to modernise monetary policy through on-chain solutions.

The ECB presented projects like Pontes and Appia, which explore tokenised central bank money and interoperability between RTGS and distributed ledger technology (DLT). The conference also showcased the Eurosystem’s efforts to develop tokenised architectures for settlement and the potential for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and tokenised assets to reshape the financial landscape.

More information can be found in the official ECB press release at the provided URL.