The ECB's Pontes is LIVE. Banks can now settle tokenized securities trades in central bank money. President of the ECB Lagarde also pushed again for a digital euro to compete with stablecoins. This I'm a little more dubious about. 1. Pontes: Pontes acts as a bridge connecting market distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms directly into TARGET Services (the Eurosystem's wholesale gross settlement engine). This follows the 2024 trials, which included 64 institutions. Pontes launches with standard operating windows before gradually expanding toward 24/7 settlement, with full rollout expected by 2028. 2. The Digital Euro ECB President Christine Lagarde also pushed hard for the Digital Euro legislation, which is now in final talks between the European Parliament and member states. She wants it done by December. Her aim is geopolitical. A digital euro is a defensive move against US private stablecoins potentially gaining more of a foothold on the continent, one that is heavily reliant on Visa and Mastercard today. This has preoccupied European leadership for a while, but became especially pressing in June, when the US Government used export controls to cut foreign nationals off from Anthropic's Fable 5 model overnight. Access came back 18 days later. Sovereignty over payments is sensible, especially when you consider that launching a EUR stablecoin to compete is pretty hard. Under MiCA, at least 30% of your reserves must sit in commercial bank deposits (60% once you're a significant issuer), and there's no "Eurobond" equivalent to US Treasuries. The business model for a European stablecoin isn't there. But the problem is, a sovereignty policy objective isn't always what the market or citizens want. Banks don't want a cash-like Euro for consumers competing with their deposits. Consumers who use stablecoins today would probably like to continue to have something as simple, 24/7 and flexible. If what they launch is essentially a closed-loop form of digital cash that can't be moved 24/7 across borders, you've launched something that doesn't solve the problem you're worried about. Which makes Qivalis even MORE interesting to me. 37 banks are building a EUR stablecoin that would work like a stablecoin, but could potentially connect to Pontes so the banks behind it settle in central bank money. Put another way, 1 EUR = 1 EUR. That hasn't always held for 1 USDC and a dollar. Europe isn't sitting on its hands. Pontes is fascinating, and I think the Fed could take a lot of notes from it. But I still don't get the digital Euro 🤷‍♂️