The European Central Bank has begun preparing to allocate a small portion of its own-funds portfolio to tokenized euro-denominated securities, marking a potential shift from testing blockchain settlement technology to using it in the central bank’s own operations.
The planned purchases are not part of monetary policy. The ECB said on September 21 that the assets under consideration are expected to include securities issued by euro-area central governments, regional authorities, companies and European supranational institutions.
Pontes to settle transactions in central bank money
The transactions are intended to settle through Pontes, the Eurosystem’s recently launched infrastructure for settling tokenized financial assets in central bank money. The planned use would give the platform a direct institutional application within the Eurosystem, rather than limiting it to a service designed for external market participants.
No purchases have been completed. The ECB has so far announced only preparatory work, with operational details and the timing of any transactions still subject to the preparation phase and a subsequent evaluation by the Executive Board.
If implemented, the investment programme would place tokenized public-sector and other eligible securities within a central bank’s own asset-management activities. For now, however, the initiative remains at the planning stage and does not represent a completed acquisition.
