Isabel Schnabel, a member of the ECB's Executive Board, used a London speech on Thursday October 1 to set out three concrete models for moving Eurosystem central bank reserves onto blockchain infrastructure. The address was delivered at the Future of Money conference, organised by the Bank of England in tribute to economist Charles Goodhart, and the underlying presentation has been published by the ECB.
The first model envisages direct issuance, with the central bank creating reserves natively as tokens on a programmable platform. The second keeps the Eurosystem's existing settlement system, T2, in place, linking it to blockchain platforms through an interoperability layer that relies on cryptographic hash synchronisation. The third has the central bank tokenise its reserves while a private actor issues settlement tokens fully backed by those reserves — tokens that would remain private claims rather than claims on the ECB itself.
According to the presentation, all three options are designed to be "fiable, sûr, extensible" and, crucially, all preserve the two-tier financial system that keeps central bank money central to interbank settlement. The ECB's framing maintains a 1-to-1 parity between reserves and deposits, and places stablecoins among private settlement assets, alongside tokenised deposits, rather than treating them as equivalent to central bank liabilities.
A follow-up to Jackson Hole
The London remarks build on a statement Schnabel made on August 28 at Jackson Hole, where she argued that stablecoins are outclassed by settlement solutions built on central bank money: "les stablecoins sont surclassés par les solutions de règlement fondées sur la monnaie de banque centrale."
The ECB is not working from theory alone. A bridge system called Pontes launched on September 21, offering banks a dual settlement circuit — via T2 or via blockchain — with 24/7 availability promised at a later stage. In parallel, a longer-term architecture project named Appia is comparing several designs, ranging from a unified ledger to interconnected networks to shared ledgers between the Eurosystem and market platforms. The ECB has set itself a deadline of 2028 to settle on a final architecture. The central bank has also said it plans to invest its own funds in tokenised securities.
Industry appetite
The debate over tokenisation is not confined to Frankfurt. A Lloyds survey cited by The Block found that 71% of decision-makers at UK financial institutions expect tokenisation to reshape their business, with 60% citing faster payments as the primary benefit. For euro-area banks watching the Eurosystem's roadmap, the choice among Schnabel's three models — and the shape Appia eventually takes — will determine how directly that reshaping touches settlement in central bank money.
