As money and financial assets become increasingly tokenised and move onto digital platforms, preserving trust is a central challenge. This speech explores how trust in money is sustained, and how these foundations can be extended to emerging tokenised ecosystems.
Introduction
Trust in money is the foundation of any financial system. As digital innovations, such as tokenisation, reshape the payments landscape and finance more generally, preserving this anchoring trust is more critical than ever. Today, I will address three key questions:
- What defines and sustains trust in money across its different forms and functions – or, what makes money “money”?
- What role can stablecoins play?
- How can tokenisation enhance, rather than disrupt, the two-tier monetary architecture?
These questions are at the core of research that we at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) conduct to support policymakers. If you want to know more about the inner workings of money in a digital age, check out our newly published chapter on digital money in our Annual Economic Report 2026 (BIS (2026a)).
