{
  "id": 4515122,
  "title": "ECB Wants the Euro Directly on Blockchain. Will It Kill Stablecoins in Europe?",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/30/ecb-wants-the-euro-directly-on-blockchain-will-it-kill-stablecoins-in",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-08-30T22:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Yahoo Finance",
    "slug": "yahoo-finance",
    "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/ecb-wants-euro-directly-blockchain-220000477.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The European Central Bank (ECB) is considering issuing euros directly onto a blockchain, according to Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel. She made her stance clear at the recent Jackson Hole symposium, focusing on stablecoins used by banks for settlement purposes rather than the euros held in individual accounts. Schnabel believes that tokenized markets require an asset that can only be created by a central bank. Stablecoins, if built to be nearly risk-free, could provide a secure solution. However, she is concerned about what happens during a financial panic when everyone seeks cash simultaneously. In such a scenario, a central bank can create additional euros, whereas a stablecoin issuer cannot. To illustrate her point, Schnabel referenced the 1907 banking panic, where money was tied to banks' holdings of government bonds, preventing the money supply from expanding. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 addressed this issue. Schnabel considers stablecoins as complementary to central bank money, not substitutes for it. According to DefiLlama data, dollar-pegged stablecoins circulate around $304 billion, while euro-pegged tokens hold less than $1 billion. If private tokens become the primary means of euro settlement, Europe would be settling in dollars instead. Crypto's presence in the Fed's Jackson Hole agenda is relatively new, with other central bankers also expressing concerns about stablecoins. The TARGET Services, Europe's settlement backbone, is expected to link with market blockchain platforms next month, with the first tests conducted from May to November 2024 involving 64 institutions across nine jurisdictions. They settled nearly €1.6 billion in central bank money. Cash finality remains within TARGET2 initially, with smart contracts and round-the-clock operation to be implemented later. Schnabel advocates for the first approach, while the other options keep the ECB on the sidelines, unable to run settlement operations through code. A second project, Appia, is evaluating whether Europe requires a single shared ledger or multiple ledgers. She cited France's Lise, which holds Europe's first tokenized exchange license, as evidence that tokenization opens up opportunities for smaller firms.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}