One Settlement Asset or Many? Definitely Many, Says Euroclear

Quick Summary

Ahead of her Sibos 2026 panel "One settlement asset or many?", Isabelle Delorme, Global Head of Product Strategy & Innovation at Euroclear, gives her answer up front: definitely many. Different forms of money solve different problems, and that will stay true as settlement goes digital. What matters is interoperability, so that tokenised deposits, stablecoins and other settlement assets coexist in one global system without fragmenting liquidity.

Will digital markets settle in one asset or many?

Delorme says it is difficult to predict what will come out of the panel itself, but if the key question is one settlement asset or many, the answer can already be given: no, of course, definitely many settlement assets.

That is a bit like today, she notes, and it is going to remain the case in a world with digital assets and digital assets for settlement.

Why will there always be more than one?

Simply because different money solves different problems. Delorme sets out the distinction:

• Central bank money is important for trust, sovereignty and more
• Commercial bank money is everywhere, and is what is used cross-border and for many applications

If that is translated or transferred to digital, she says, it is going to be the same. The industry should expect a variety of settlement assets and settlement means, not a single winner.

What matters if there are many settlement assets?

What matters, as usual, is interoperability. Delorme is clear that nobody wants to create new fragmented liquidity pools.

So the question of settlement assets and digital money comes hand in hand with the industry's ability to make sure they coexist across one global system. That is where Euroclear and its peers are working together: to make sure liquidity is not fragmented, because that is the last thing participants and clients want.

FF NEWS TAKE:

The "one asset or many" debate is often framed as a contest between stablecoins, tokenised deposits and central bank money. Delorme skips the contest and goes straight to the real issue. Multiple forms of money already coexist in traditional markets because they do different jobs, and digital will not change that. The risk is not choice, it is fragmentation. If infrastructures get interoperability right, the settlement asset becomes a detail; if they get it wrong, liquidity splinters across ledgers. That makes this one of the Sibos sessions to watch.