Bank of Italy Deputy Governor: DLT and Stablecoins - Where Do We Stand?
Summary
Paolo Angelini, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, delivered a speech at an international symposium in Rome on 20 April 2026, assessing the state of DLT and stablecoin adoption in the financial sector after three years of observation. The speech identifies four main use case categories for DLT in finance: crypto assets, asset tokenization, financial market infrastructure, and payments and settlement including stablecoins. The Deputy Governor concludes that DLT-based infrastructure may occupy an important place in the financial sector as adopters move beyond pilots into production-grade projects, describing the trajectory as a gradual building of momentum rather than a "big bang" disruption.
“We are witnessing a gradual building of momentum, rather than a "big bang".”
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What changed
Paolo Angelini, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, delivered a speech at an international symposium on 20 April 2026 presenting his updated assessment of distributed ledger technology and stablecoin adoption in the financial sector, revisiting questions he had asked three years prior. The speech identifies four broad categories of DLT use cases: crypto assets, asset tokenization, financial market infrastructure, and payments and settlement including stablecoins. The Deputy Governor concludes that while the initial promise of blockchain to eliminate financial intermediation has proved elusive, DLT-based infrastructure may still occupy an important place as projects move from pilots into production, describing the trajectory as a gradual building of momentum rather than a "big bang".
For financial institutions, fintech firms, and technology companies engaged with or considering DLT applications, the speech signals continued regulatory attention to governance, compliance, and operational resilience requirements at scale. The Deputy Governor's affirmative but tentative assessment suggests a cautious welcome for DLT adoption, contingent on meeting adequate standards in these areas. Firms developing or deploying production-grade DLT systems or stablecoin arrangements should ensure their frameworks address these specific concerns to align with supervisory expectations.
Conference
- Date
- 2026-04-20
- Location
- Rome
Archived snapshot
Apr 22, 2026GovPing captured this document from the original source. If the source has since changed or been removed, this is the text as it existed at that time.
Paolo Angelini: DLT and stablecoins - where do we stand?
Speech by Mr Paolo Angelini, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the International Economic Symposium "The global economy at an inflection point: technology, policy, and the future of growth", co-hosted by the Bank of Italy and National Association for Business Economics (NABE), Rome, 20 April 2026.
Central bank speech | 22 April 2026 by Paolo Angelini PDF full text (255kb) | 10
pages The publication of the Bitcoin protocol in October 2008 fueled the promise that blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) could do away with intermediation. Decentralized verification and, later, programmable execution were expected to make financial intermediaries redundant. Almost 20 years since, this promise has proved elusive at best. Fully automated financial services have not taken over the market; human governance and formal legal frameworks, compliance, risk management, are still necessary to foster trust.
However, DLT-based infrastructure may still come to occupy an important place in the financial sector, as adopters move beyond pilots and into production-grade projects. Indeed, so far, we have not seen disruption, but rather gradual adaptation to technical change.
The question I want to address today is: can DLT be adopted at scale in a way that satisfies adequate requirements of governance, compliance, and operational resilience? Are there substantial use cases for which it is an economically viable solution?
I asked the same questions three years ago, and concluded that the jury was still out.
Today, my answer is a tentative yes. Yet, I would put the emphasis on the "tentative" qualifier. We are witnessing a gradual building of momentum, rather than a "big bang".
DLT in finance spans a wide array of use cases, but many initiatives fall into four main broad categories: crypto assets, for which the technology was initially developed; asset tokenization; financial market infrastructure; payments and settlement, including via stablecoins.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of the BIS. About the author Paolo Angelini More from this author
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