Roadmap for Wholesale CBDC in the Philippines (IMF)
The IMF published a high-level technical assistance report that proposes a structured roadmap for exploring a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) in the Philippines, anchored in use cases for tokenized government bond settlement and cross-border payments within the wholesale payment landscape. The IMF used stakeholder workshops to surface pain points—securities settlement inefficiencies, lack of interoperability, and slow, costly cross-border flows—and then prioritize wCBDC applications to address them. The roadmap, organized under the IMF’s “5P” methodology, sequences foundational work (governance, resources, legal underpinnings, risk and suitability analysis) alongside parallel workstreams for each use case, moving from research to proofs of concept. Unresolved issues include legal reforms, coordination with foreign jurisdictions, and empirically demonstrating net system-wide benefits. [IMF]
The Rails Are Almost Ready. Is the Law? (LinkedIn)
A LinkedIn post by the Bank of Israel’s Assaf David-Margalit argues that the Eurosystem’s tokenized-settlement infrastructure (Projects Pontes and Appia) is progressing faster than the legal framework needed to make tokenized-asset settlement in central bank money legally robust and cross-border enforceable. Pontes can be delivered on time because the Eurosystem controls the technical design and build, whereas wholesale-tokenization law depends on European Union (EU) legislative processes, optional “28th regime” techniques, and remains at the level of aspiration rather than a concrete instrument, leaving firms to rely on the Distributed Ledger Technology Pilot Regime and legacy rules. This sequencing gap makes legal certainty, rather than technical readiness, the binding constraint: banks will delay serious adoption until finality, ownership, insolvency treatment, and cross-border enforceability are clarified, so the eventual usefulness of the new rails depends more on lawmaking than engineering. [LinkedIn]
HKMA Establishes Tokenised Bond Expert Group (HKMA)
Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has created a Tokenised Bond Expert Group to design policy, market practice, and infrastructure changes to scale tokenized bond issuance and trading in Hong Kong’s fixed income market. The group aggregates industry associations, financial institutions, legal firms, and infrastructure and technology providers, and has already begun reviewing how existing legal and regulatory frameworks apply to tokenized bonds. Its initial discussions will feed into an ongoing exercise with the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau to identify specific legal and regulatory enhancements, with details to follow. [HKMA]
BTW if you want to see a complete database of my DFC-related posts going back years, including many that didn’t make the Daily Digest cut, click here.
FYI I produce a monthly digest of digital fiat currency (DFC) developments exclusively for the official sector (e.g., central banks, ministries of finance and international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank)) plus academics and firms that are active in the DFC space (commercial banks, technology providers, consultants, etc.). (DFCs include central bank digital currency (CBDC), stablecoins and tokenized deposits.) It goes out via email on the first business day of every month, and if you’re interested in being on the mailing list, please email me at john@kiffmeister.com.