stable coins
By Julie Binoche
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What Pontes Actually Does. The mechanics matter here. Pontes is built on work the Eurosystem did in 2024, running tests for…
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Appia Runs Alongside Pontes. Pontes isn't the only project the ECB has moving. There's also Appia, a parallel initiative aimed…
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The Road to 2028. The phased rollout matters. Pontes won't arrive fully formed — services expand gradually,…
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The European Central Bank just launched something big. Pontes, a new settlement system for wholesale tokenized assets, went live Monday — and it's built entirely around central…
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The ECB didn't ease into this quietly. Pontes is meant to let financial institutions settle tokenized asset transactions using the most risk-free settlement asset available:…
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Piero Cipollone, a member of the ECB Executive Board, said Pontes has the potential to help the ecosystem scale.
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The mechanics matter here. Pontes is built on work the Eurosystem did in 2024, running tests for settling distributed ledger technology-based transactions in central bank money.
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The platform's design centers on DLT integration. By running issuance, trading, settlement, and custody through a single system, Pontes cuts out a lot of the friction that…
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No specific participant names have been released for the initial rollout. Unclear when that changes.
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The stablecoin angle is worth sitting with for a second. Stablecoins have become a default settlement layer in a lot of tokenized finance experiments globally.
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Related: ECBs Pontes Goes Live, Putting Central Bank Money Behind Tokenized Settlement
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Pontes isn't the only project the ECB has moving. There's also Appia, a parallel initiative aimed at building an integrated ecosystem for DLT-based financial services.
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The two projects aren't competing. They're kind of designed to complement each other. Pontes handles the settlement layer; Appia looks at the wider infrastructure picture.
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That's a significant ambition. Tokenized finance is moving fast globally, and central banks in multiple jurisdictions have been scrambling to figure out how to stay relevant in a…
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The phased rollout matters. Pontes won't arrive fully formed — services expand gradually, operating hours grow over time, and the participant base is expected to build as…
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