尽管2008年的比特币白皮书设想通过去中心化使中央银行走向过时，但分布式账本与资产代币化向主流金融的渗透表明，数字化金融体系反而更加依赖央行货币这一公共信任基石。批发金融市场日常结算规模达数千亿欧元，必须依托零违约风险的基准资产以确保交易最终性。虽然稳定币与代币化商业存款能将传统数天的结算周期压缩至数秒，但其内含不可规避的信用违约风险，而无担保加密货币则缺乏负债主体且波动剧烈，均无法替代主权货币充当全市场的通用结算锚。

纵观金融历史，最稳健的体系始终依托公共权威赋予的货币信任，将商业机构的微观竞争与主权发行的零风险结算机制相结合。为将代币化的效率红利融入欧洲金融体系，欧洲央行于9月21日正式启动了“庞特斯”（Pontes）计划，把新兴的代币化资产交易平台同央行货币结算系统互联。这构成了欧洲数字金融演进的关键第一步，旨在到2028年实现代币化央行货币直接原生部署于资产所在的区块链上，在支持全天候全时段交易的同时，防范欧洲资本市场发生跨区域制度割裂。

公共数字结算资产的核心意义在于维护“货币单一性”原则，确保无论依托何种技术形式或私营载体，每一欧元的法定价值均绝对等同。通过打破私有生态的壁垒并推行统一的技术标准与互操作性规范，央行货币为私营稳定币与代币化存款的无缝兑换及流动性整合提供了根本保障。这种兼具安全性与竞争性的开放架构，有望最终撼动并压降自19世纪末以来便长期停滞在约2%水平的金融中介服务成本。

While the 2008 bitcoin manifesto envisioned financial decentralization rendering monetary authorities obsolete, the integration of distributed ledgers and asset tokenisation into wholesale finance demonstrates that digital markets depend fundamentally on trusted central-bank money. Wholesale financial systems process daily transactions valued in billions of euros, demanding absolute finality through default-free settlement assets. Although private distributed instruments such as stablecoins and tokenised deposits offer operational speed by compressing settlement timelines from days into seconds, they carry inherent counterparty credit risk, while unbacked cryptocurrencies exhibit excessive volatility and lack legal liability, disqualifying them as universal monetary anchors.

Historically, durable market architectures have relied on public authorities to guarantee monetary trust, combining competitive private banking with sovereign risk-free settlement. To incorporate these technological efficiencies into European capital markets, the European Central Bank launched its Pontes initiative on September 21st, bridging distributed trading platforms with traditional central-bank reserve settlement systems. This phased modernization establishes a unified institutional foundation, paving the way for the direct issuance of native tokenised central-bank money across blockchain networks by 2028 to enable seamless round-the-clock trading while preventing cross-border market fragmentation.

Publicly issued digital settlement assets remain essential to preserving the singleness of money—ensuring that one euro maintains an identical valuation regardless of underlying technological architecture or private issuance format. By preventing isolated private ecosystems and establishing common interoperability standards, central bank involvement facilitates frictionless convertibility among emerging private stablecoins and tokenised commercial deposits. Furthermore, fostering competitive digital market infrastructure holds the transformative potential to compress the total cost of financial intermediation, which has remained rigidly locked at approximately 2% of transaction value since the late nineteenth century.

Source: The future of digital finance rests on public money, not private

Subtitle: Central banks will be needed to maintain trust and ensure interoperability, argues Piero Cipollone

Dateline: Sep 24th 2026\n