Czech central bank tests DLT bonds, boxing out stablecoins

Czech National Bank Governor Aleš Michl wants central bank money to anchor tokenized securities settlement, a preference that could limit the institutional payment balances available to stablecoin issuers.

He set out that position on Nov. 10, as the bank announced it had completed small bond and repo tests.

If eligible institutions can pay through usable central-bank-money infrastructure, those trades need not generate demand for stablecoins. Yet, the CNB has not identified the pilot’s exact cash instrument, so the competitive implication remains forward-looking.

The opportunity for private issuers depends on who supplies the payment asset and whether bonds move onto distributed ledgers.

The CNB reported completed transfers, purchases and sales against payment, and repo transactions during October and November.

According to the bank, settlement was almost instantaneous, but transaction volume was only in the tens of thousands of koruna.

In his Nov. 10 speech, Michl named commercial bank Česká spořitelna as the counterparty, put each bond’s nominal value at CZK 10,000 and said interest payments had also been tested.

The bonds ran on Prague’s Central Securities Depository infrastructure using distributed-ledger technology (DLT). The CNB says only approved financial institutions can access the network, with transaction records visible only to the counterparties.

Michl’s goal is a much larger market for koruna-denominated assets that are easier to buy and sell than German Bunds. That is an ambition for the market, beyond what a small test establishes.

His settlement preference also sits alongside a broader willingness to experiment. A year earlier, CNB Lab had started testing Bitcoin, a dollar stablecoin and a tokenized deposit.

The depository’s general transfer guidance describes a buyer paying its cash account. Receipt of the money triggers the securities transfer and generation of a payment order to the seller.

Crediting the seller then depends on the receiving bank, its support for instant payments, and the transfer timing.

A Nov. 5 presentation by CNB payments-regulation director Michal Vodrážka said settlement in CNB money on DLT was not yet available.

That was five days before the bond-test announcement, which did not specify whether the cash arrangement had changed. The Nov. 5 presentation also said the CNB Board had made no decision to issue a Czech retail central bank digital currency.

Putting a bond on a shared ledger does not determine which institution supplies the money used to buy it.

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on Sept. 21 to enable wholesale tokenized asset transactions to settle in central bank money. An initial group of market participants and DLT operators had completed onboarding, with more institutions expected to connect.