Overview
- Denis Beau, the Banque de France deputy governor who spoke Tuesday, urged a Europe‑wide push by public and private players to build euro-based tokenized money on blockchain.
- ECB President Christine Lagarde has warned against promoting private euro stablecoins and favors a central bank digital euro targeted around 2029.
- Policymakers cite the stablecoin market’s heavy tilt toward the U.S. dollar, with about 98% of a roughly $310 billion market in dollar-pegged tokens like USDT and USDC.
- Beau’s stance aligns with Qivalis, a 12‑bank consortium including ING, BBVA, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas that plans a euro token later in 2026, a move framed as a guard against “digital dollarization.”
- Beau said the Eurosystem plans a first step this year with a wholesale central bank money service in tokenized form through projects such as Pontes, which could let banks settle tokenized trades in euro rather than defaulting to dollar tokens.