From lab to workshop – digital currencies ready to become a reality

Digital currencies were in the spotlight at this year’s Point Zero Forum, but notably fewer presentations and discussions focused on educational and explorative viewpoints than in previous years. Ebullient phrases like “strategic upside potential” or “activating growth areas” were less in evidence this time around. Instead, the central question was how to build trust in blockchain-based forms of money. It is now time to leave behind innovation theatre and blockchain tourism and move on towards large-scale implementation.

The ranks of evangelists may have thinned out, but so too has the fundamental opposition. The words of Agustín Carstens, former General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), carry a lot of weight. He publicly admitted to a change of heart on stablecoins, with his initial deep-rooted scepticism turning into optimism about their economic added value. BIS Deputy General Manager Andréa Maechler, meanwhile, explained how her institution wants to design stablecoins that better replicate the strengths of fiat money, and Swiss National Bank Vice Chairman Antoine Martin said that the bank would take suitable measures to support cashless payments using new forms of money. These are unequivocal signs of tangible progress in deposit tokens and stablecoins as they gradually prepare to demonstrate what they can do in the real world.

The year 2026 might thus be remembered as the one in which tokenised assets finally transitioned to production – not as isolated applications, but as part of a comprehensive transformation of financial market infrastructure. The implications are far-reaching. Tokenisation is about more than just chasing efficiency gains in existing processes. At its core lies the reconstruction of financial market infrastructure: a reduced coordination workload, almost instant settlement, the end of conventional cut-off times, and the possibility of different assets interacting on shared, programmable platforms.

Money is not a primarily technological artefact, it is a social construct founded on trust, enforceability and resilience. For innovative forms of money to be scalable, they must be embedded in credible institutional structures, and an interoperable financial architecture must prevent fragmentation into competing digital islands.

This is precisely Switzerland’s strength. It is seen internationally as a model jurisdiction – not always the fastest, but systematically moving in the right direction. The Swiss approach is pragmatic. It combines technological openness with legal certainty and a close dialogue between the public and private sectors. This may not seem so spectacular, but it provides the exact conditions required to take tokenised financial systems from the experimental phase into implementation.

The conclusion, then, is both clear and especially relevant to Switzerland: the discussion is moving on from asking how this technology works to asking what institutional architecture should underpin it. A combination of trusted issuers, clear regulation, scalable infrastructure and embedding in settlement mechanisms that are compatible with central banks could place us at the genesis of a whole new financial system. Projects designing future-proof tokenised money like the BIS Innovation Hub’s Agorá can provide the building blocks. Agorá promises to reduce friction in the fight against money laundering, in monetary policy and in the settlement of international payments. Switzerland is well positioned to play a leading role in shaping this transition.