EU tokenization and wholesale CBDC
plus: BTC inflows, inflation data quirks and more
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EU tokenization and wholesale CBDC
Markets: BTC inflows
Macro: inflation data quirks
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EU tokenization and wholesale CBDC
While most coverage of Europe’s work on CBDCs has focused on the controversial retail-facing digital euro, significant strides have been made on a more subtle yet more transformative wholesale version.
Last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) published a roadmap for Appia, its vision for a tokenized financial market incorporating both securities and central bank money. The roadmap does not include a launch date, but a more detailed blueprint is expected by late 2028.
The far-off timeline confirms Europe’s well-deserved reputation for caution and detailed deliberation, essentially announcing a plan to have a plan.
But it contains a nugget of action that – while itself tentative – could produce meaningful results.
Appia covers comprehensive market innovation (by European standards) some time in the future. On a separate track, part of Appia but with a different timeline and go-to-market strategy, is a project called Pontes. This has the more concrete, short-term aim of kickstarting more definitive DLT platform development.
