Regulations
By Sakamoto Nashi
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Why Central Bank Money Matters Here. There's a reason the ECB is leaning hard into the "central bank money" angle.
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US Takes the Opposite Road. The contrast with the United States is sharp. There's no federal equivalent to Pontes.
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What Pontes Means for Tokenized Assets in Europe. The launch matters beyond just the technical details.
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The ECB launched Pontes today. It's a new settlement infrastructure built specifically for tokenized financial markets, and it runs on central bank money — not private reserves,…
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For now, only credit institutions get access. The system runs during standard European business hours, which is a pretty deliberate constraint for a market that, by its nature,…
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The core idea is straightforward: real-world asset tokenization is growing fast across Europe, and trades in tokenized instruments need to settle somewhere.
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There's a reason the ECB is leaning hard into the "central bank money" angle. Counterparty risk is one of the messier problems in tokenized markets.
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And that's a big deal for institutional adoption. Wholesale participants, the kind that actually move markets, have been cautious about tokenized trading precisely because…
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But there's a catch. Market operators who want to plug into the Eurosystem through Pontes need to comply with the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation — MiCA — among other…
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The contrast with the United States is sharp. There's no federal equivalent to Pontes. Washington hasn't built a centralized, central-bank-backed settlement layer for tokenized…
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Nasdaq recently put $100 million into Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, specifically to support tokenized market infrastructure development.
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Related: Kraken Integrates with X Cashtag Program, Streamlining Crypto Trading for Users
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The New York Stock Exchange is also working on a blockchain platform. The goal there is continuous trading of tokenized equities and ETFs — which would be a pretty significant…
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So you've got two very different philosophies playing out in real time. The EU builds the infrastructure first, regulates it tightly, and controls access carefully.
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It's unclear yet which model will pull more institutional volume into tokenized markets over the next few years.
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