Manuel Klein

As the adoption of stablecoins accelerates globally, policymakers and financial institutions are confronting a deeper structural question: what form of money will anchor the next generation of digital finance?

Deposit tokens have emerged as one of the leading responses to this challenge, combining the safeguards of the traditional banking system with the programmability and efficiency of distributed ledger technology. However, despite growing institutional interest, most initiatives remain confined to pilots and closed networks, even as stablecoins rapidly achieve scale, distribution, and integration across digital asset ecosystems.

This roundtable brings together banks, infrastructure providers, and policymakers to examine the regulatory, legal, operational, and governance challenges that constrain adoption of tokenized deposits, and the extent to which deposit tokens will coexist with or compete against stablecoins and other forms of digital money. It will also explore the growing push by jurisdictions worldwide to develop local-currency stablecoins as a strategic counterweight to dollar-denominated instruments and what these twin approaches - local currency stablecoins vis-a-vis on-chain commercial bank money - mean for the future shape of digital money.

Critically, the discussion will pose a broader strategic question for policymakers and financial institutions alike: whether tokenized commercial bank deposits can provide a sovereign and trusted foundation for the digital economy, or whether the future of digital money will be predominantly shaped by private stablecoin ecosystems, and the role of jurisdiction-specific stablecoin models therein.