Overview
- The IMF, which released a focused note Monday, said moving assets onto shared ledgers with instant “atomic” settlement can make stress unfold faster and leave officials less time to step in.
- Tokenization, which puts money, bonds, and funds on blockchains so trades settle automatically, was described as a shift in trust from institutions to code that also moves activity across borders at machine speed.
- The roadmap urges anchoring settlement in safe assets such as wholesale central bank digital currencies, setting clear legal finality, aligning rules across similar activities, adapting central-bank liquidity tools to 24/7 markets, and requiring audits and emergency pause switches for system-critical smart contracts.
- Stablecoins were flagged as likely settlement rails whose safety rests on reserves and redemption, which makes them vulnerable to confidence runs much like money market funds.
- Industry figures quoted by Decrypt said the note lacks a fair baseline and could slow needed infrastructure, while CoinDesk highlighted current scale near $23 billion in tokenized real‑world assets tracked by DeFiLlama.