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Sintra 2026: ECB hike, Warsh panel, tokenisation session

ECB Forum on Central Banking 2026 (29 June to 1 July): the ECB's 11 June rate hike and its projections, Kevin Warsh's first international panel as Fed chair, and the tokenisation session around the Bank of Korea's Project Hangang. Facts and attributed remarks, sourced.

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dated revision: July 14, 2026French originalprimary sourcesno tracker

ECB Forum on Central Banking, Sintra, 29 June to 1 July 2026. Official theme: “Shaping Europe’s future: innovation, growth and stability”. This account sticks to facts and attributed remarks, sourced at the end of the article.

The Sintra forum, hosted each year by the ECB since 2014, gathers central-bank governors, academics and market participants. Three strands of the 2026 edition are covered here: the rate trajectory, Kevin Warsh’s first international panel as Fed chair, and the session on tokenisation. This piece connects our macro and central-banks coverage with our tracking of crypto and monetary infrastructure.

The 11 June hike and the Eurosystem projections

On 11 June, the ECB raised its three key rates by 25 basis points: deposit facility to 2.25%, main refinancing to 2.40%, marginal lending to 2.65%, effective 17 June. It is the first hike since September 2023; it closes a cycle of eight cuts begun in June 2024. The ECB attributes the decision to the inflationary pressures tied to the war in the Middle East.

Headline HICP for May came in at 3.2% year on year, the highest since September 2023, the core at 2.5%. The Eurosystem projections published with the decision assume average inflation of 3.0% in 2026, 2.3% in 2027 and 2.0% in 2028, and growth of 0.8%, 1.2% then 1.5%. Euro-area GDP contracted 0.2% in the first quarter of 2026. Economists cited by Euronews raise a risk of stagflation.

ECB deposit rate: eight cuts, then one hike 4.00% 2.00% peak 4.00% (Sept 2023) trough 2.00% 2.25% eight cuts (June 2024 to June 2025) First hike since September 2023. Effective 17 June. Source: European Central Bank, monetary policy decision of 11 June 2026.

The debate over a second hike

On the sidelines of the forum, Alexander Demarco, acting governor of the Central Bank of Malta and a member of the Governing Council, told Reuters that the ECB should not rush a further hike, given the retreat of oil toward its pre-conflict levels. In his view, the second-round effects that might justify tightening (drift in expectations, wage demands, indirect transmission) are not materialising, which argues for waiting for the next set of projections. He adds that the mildest scenario of the June projections already embedded a further turn of the screw, which would then remain possible. According to Reuters, markets see about a one-in-three chance of a hike in July and a fully priced move by October.

The Warsh, Lagarde, Bailey, Macklem panel

On 1 July, Kevin Warsh took part in his first international panel as Fed chair, Jerome Powell’s term having ended this year, alongside Christine Lagarde, Andrew Bailey (Bank of England) and Tiff Macklem (Bank of Canada). According to CNBC’s live coverage, Warsh said prices remain too high and that price stability remains the primary objective, while saying he is open to the possible disinflationary effects of AI. He asserted that the Fed’s independence would not change, whatever the pressure exerted by Donald Trump.

Warsh embraces a communication style at odds with the Powell era: fewer public remarks, no forward guidance. CNBC reports, citing Bank of America, twelve interventions by Fed officials since the June meeting, against an average of about twenty-three over the same window since 2022. The frame of his doctrine had been set at his first FOMC and his battle over the balance sheet; on the US side, inflation is tracked in the return of US inflation.

The tokenisation session: Project Hangang

The session on tokenisation, chaired by Piero Cipollone (ECB), rested on a paper signed by a Bank of Korea team (Jaemin Ryu, Hyun Song Shin, Joonyi Sung, Sung Guan Yun) devoted to Project Hangang.

According to this paper, Hangang is an implementation of the unified ledger formalised by the BIS in 2023: a single programmable platform where tokenised central-bank money (wCBDC), tokenised commercial-bank deposits and tokenised assets, government bonds for example, coexist. The test gathered about 80,000 users and 12,000 selected merchants, from April to June 2025. The figure of “7 banks representing 80% of banking assets”, present in some summaries, does not appear in the paper and is not repeated here.

The unified ledger: three blocks, one settlement single programmable platform wCBDC settlement anchor tokenised deposits means of payment tokenised assets e.g. government bonds Atomic settlement: three layers collapse into one step message clearing settlement 1 step Final settlement in central-bank money preserves the two-tier system and the singleness of money. Source: Ryu, Shin, Sung, Yun, "A unified ledger in practice", ECB Forum 2026; BIS (2023).

The paper describes two design choices. First, consensus: Hangang runs on proof of authority, the central bank validating transactions, and not proof of work or proof of stake. The paper explains that a decentralised ledger with strict consensus must compensate its validators for the risk of non-coordination, a cost funded by fees and therefore by congestion, which pushes toward fragmentation into competing chains; the central bank, for its part, does not bear that cost.

Second, the “burn-and-issue” mechanism: in an interbank transfer, a smart contract executes in a single transaction the destruction of the tokenised deposits at the issuing bank, the transfer of wCBDC between the two banks, then their re-issuance at the receiving bank; if a step fails, everything is cancelled. According to the paper, this mechanism preserves the singleness of money: a deposit remains the liability of a single bank and the payment goes at par. The paper contrasts this model with the stablecoin, where the token is transferred as is and the holder bears a claim on the issuer, whose value can deviate from par depending on the issuer’s solvency and risk appetite. The case of dollar stablecoins is treated in our work on the sovereign tolling of the Strait of Hormuz in USDT on Tron.

Tokenised deposit and stablecoin: two structures Tokenised deposit (burn-and-issue) 1. burned at bank A 2. wCBDC transferred between banks 3. re-issued at bank B → always at par liability of a single bank, settled in central-bank money Stablecoin (simple transfer) the token changes hands a claim on the issuer, not on the sender's bank → can deviate from par depending on the issuer's solvency and risk appetite Source: Garratt and Shin (2023); Hangang paper, ECB Forum 2026.

On the separation between the monetary layer, which carries value, and the programming layer, which carries the conditions of use, the paper describes the principle but does not specify, in the sections consulted, the token standards (ERC-20, ERC-1155, ERC-3525) sometimes attributed to the project; they are therefore not asserted here.

The European initiatives: Pontes and Appia

The paper situates Hangang against two ECB work streams: Pontes, which links the tokenised to the existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) infrastructure, and Appia, which aims to deliver by 2028 the blueprint for an integrated wholesale-settlement ecosystem, anchored in tokenised central-bank money. In its 11 June statement, the Governing Council indicates that the digital euro and tokenised wholesale central-bank money will strengthen Europe’s “strategic autonomy”. On the mechanics of settlement and collateral, see the liquidity factory of repo; on central-bank reserves, de-dollarisation through gold.

Other sessions: AI, productivity, migration

The session on financial stability and AI was chaired by Isabel Schnabel, with the participation of Sarah Breeden (Bank of England) and Torsten Slok (Apollo). According to session dispatches, Breeden identified a jump in the cyber capabilities of agentic AI as her main financial-stability concern. The academic work included Bart Van Ark’s paper on the alignment of investment, innovation and diffusion, and Giovanni Peri’s on immigration as a productivity factor in OECD countries.

On the closing panel, according to CNBC, Lagarde said Europe is behind on AI and on frontier-technology firms, and that Europe and the United States are “hostage to each other”, Europe representing, in her view, about 25% of many hyperscalers’ revenue.

Sources

This analysis is not investment advice.

// cite this analysis

l0g, “Sintra 2026: ECB hike, Warsh panel, tokenisation session”, l0g.fr, published July 14, 2026, updated July 14, 2026, https://l0g.fr/en/analysis/sintra-2026-ecb-hike-warsh-tokenisation/

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