{"id":15607,"date":"2026-04-17T03:03:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T03:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/15607\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T03:03:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T03:03:40","slug":"ecb-director-tokenization-gains-unmatched-by-previous-waves-of-tech-change-ledger-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/15607\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB Director: tokenization gains unmatched by previous waves of tech change &#8211; Ledger Insights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank\u2019s (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ledgerinsights.com\/tag\/ecb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ECB\u2019s<\/a>) executive board, gave an expansive speech on tokenization describing it as having \u201cthe potential to deliver efficiency gains unmatched by previous waves of technological change.\u201d But he also highlighted the dangers of fragmentation and paths to address this.<\/p>\n<p>Despite many waves of previous financial innovation, the unit cost of financial intermediation in the US has stubbornly remained around 2%, which is not significantly different from major European economies. Cipollone framed the goal as reducing the gap between savers and borrowers. This lack of cost reduction may be the result of those innovations, including electronic trading and dematerialization, layering efficiency gains onto an existing financial architecture.<\/p>\n<p>This contrasts with tokenization. \u201cRather than improving just one part of a system, these technologies reframe the logic of the system as a whole,\u201d said Cipollone. That\u2019s because distributed ledger technology (DLT) can support the full life cycle of issuance, trading, settlement and custody on the same infrastructure and operating 24\/7.<\/p>\n<p>However, he also highlighted that the gains are \u201cconditional on the complementary components of a market adopting this technology simultaneously.\u201d He provided an analogy with electricity, where factories initially simply replaced steam engines with dynamos. It wasn\u2019t until factories redesigned their entire workflows that the full benefits were reaped. Earlier this week another central banker, Tuang Lee Lim, Assistant MD at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), made a similar analogy between tokenization and the invention of cars. \u201cWho wants to buy a car without roads?\u201d asked Lim. \u201cThe roads, the whole infrastructure needs to be in place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Article continues \u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"70\" height=\"119\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/subscriber-padlock-small.png\" alt=\"subscriber padlock\" class=\"wp-image-39468\" style=\"width:55px\"\/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top:var(--wp--preset--spacing--30);padding-bottom:var(--wp--preset--spacing--30);font-size:14px\">Want the full story? <a href=\"https:\/\/pro.ledgerinsights.com\/pricing\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pro subscribers<\/a> get complete articles, exclusive industry analysis, and early access to legislative updates that keep you ahead of the competition. Join the professionals who are choosing deeper insights over surface level news.<\/p>\n<p>Image Copyright: ECB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank\u2019s (ECB\u2019s) executive board, gave an expansive speech on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[11827,2700,11828,10249,10250,2803,1858,11829,3069,11830],"class_list":{"0":"post-15607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-european-central-bank","8":"tag-appia","9":"tag-blockchain","10":"tag-digital-currency","11":"tag-distributed-ledger","12":"tag-dlt","13":"tag-ecb","14":"tag-european-central-bank","15":"tag-pontes","16":"tag-tokenization","17":"tag-wholesale-cbdc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}