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FILE PHOTO - European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde apeaks during the event “Hofburg in Dialogue: Economy – Europe – Resilience” at the Hofburg in Vienna. (is associated with: «ECB launches tokenized assets platform») Hans Klaus Techt/APA/dpa The European Central Bank (ECB) and the national central banks of the eurozone on Monday launched a new platform designed to enable financial institutions to settle digital securities directly using secure central bank money.
In a statement, the ECB said it would invest some of its own funds in tokenized securities through the Pontes platform to test the technology in practice.
Until now, securities trading has relied on a chain of intermediaries. Anyone buying bonds or shares goes through separate processes, from the stock exchange via clearing houses to custody with specialist banks.
Through so-called tokenization, whereby assets are recorded in the form of digital tokens based on modern blockchain technology, also known as distributed ledger technology (DLT), these steps can be consolidated into a single, automated process.
This decentralized database technology has so far been known to the public primarily a...