Speech by Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at a workshop on digital assets and monetary policy transmission organised by the European Central Bank, Banca d’Italia, the Euro Area Business Cycle Network and the Centre for Economic Policy Research

Rome, 4 May 2026

Digitalisation and tokenisation are transforming payments and finance.^[1]

These innovations have the potential to improve financial services and reduce costs; they also have important implications that central banks need to consider.

Today I will therefore outline how a central bank should position itself to genuinely help enhance the economic efficiency of the financial system as promised by tokenisation, while preserving monetary policy effectiveness, financial stability and monetary sovereignty.

The conditions for tokenisation and DLT to deliver genuine efficiency gains

Recognising the transformative potential of tokenisation

Let me first explain why tokenisation and distributed ledger technology…