Suit Up · Asia's institutional desk on tokenisation

The unified-ledger blueprint is the architectural framing the Bank for International Settlements published in Chapter III of its Annual Economic Report 2025, "The next-generation monetary and financial system" (released 24 June 2025, full chapter 29 June 2025). The blueprint privileges a tokenised monetary system built on three combined elements (tokenised central-bank reserves, tokenised commercial-bank money, tokenised government bonds) operating on a shared programmable platform with atomic settlement, and it argues that this construction satisfies the singleness, elasticity, and integrity tests that stablecoins fail (BIS press release, 24 Jun 2025; AER 2025 Chapter III). For an APAC tokenisation operator, the blueprint is the framing document a serious operator should know because it is the most explicit BIS positioning to date on which architectural choice the standard-setters prefer, and it is the analytical lens that will be used to read every regulator move on stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and CBDC over the next 12-24 months.

What the blueprint actually proposes

The chapter's load-bearing claim is that a "unified ledger" combining three tokenised elements on a shared programmable platform is the architecture best suited to the next phase of the monetary system. The three elements:

Tokenised central-bank reserves provide settlement finality and the trust anchor for the system. They are the highest-quality settlement asset by definition, issued directly by the central bank on the unified ledger.
Tokenised commercial-bank money preserves the proven two-tier system structure. Banks remain the primary issuers of money to the real economy through deposits, but the deposits are tokenised and operate on the same platform as the central-bank settlement leg.
Tokenised government bonds serve as benchmark safe assets for collateral and liquidity provision. Their inclusion on the unified ledger lets repo, collateral mobility, and central-bank monetary operations execute atomically against the cash legs.

The "unified" piece is the atomic settlement primitive that the shared programmable platform enables: multiple transaction steps (payment leg, asset leg, collateral leg) execute simultaneously rather than sequentially, with the on-chain entries serving as the operative records for each leg (AER 2025 Chapter III). The three named programmes the chapter references as worked examples or lineage are Project Agorá (cross-border tokenised commercial-bank money settlement across seven jurisdictions), Project Pine (monetary policy implementation on tokenised platforms), and mBridge (cross-border CBDC, mentioned in the contextual cross-border-cooperation framing).

Why the blueprint frames stablecoins as inadequate

The chapter is explicit in arguing that stablecoins fail three tests for serving as the mainstay of the monetary system. The framing has been picked up by multiple subsequent BIS speeches and by central bankers across Europe and APAC, and it is worth understanding precisely because it is the analytical vocabulary the BIS now uses when discussing private-sector stablecoin proliferation versus the unified-ledger model.

Singleness. A monetary system requires that all monies trade at par with each other (one dollar of deposits at one bank equals one dollar of deposits at another equals one dollar of central-bank reserves). The chapter argues that stablecoins, as bearer instruments traded on secondary markets, can deviate from par against the reference currency and against each other, breaking the singleness property. Tokenised commercial-bank money under the two-tier system, settling against tokenised central-bank money, preserves singleness by construction.

Elasticity. The monetary system needs to provide flexible liquidity (overdrafts, intraday credit, central-bank lender-of-last-resort facilities) without requiring full upfront payment for every transaction. The chapter argues that stablecoins, as fully-reserved instruments, lack the elasticity that bank money provides through fractional-reserve banking and that central-bank money provides through monetary-operations frameworks. The unified-ledger model preserves elasticity by retaining the bank-money layer.

Integrity. The monetary system needs effective AML/CFT, sanctions compliance, and supervisory oversight. The chapter argues that stablecoins on permissionless blockchains, as bearer instruments, structurally enable transactions that bypass the integrity controls that the bank-money and central-bank-money perimeters enforce by design. The unified ledger as described preserves integrity through the permissioned architecture and the built-in identity-and-compliance plumbing (AER 2025 Chapter III).

The polite reading of this framing is that the BIS prefers the architecture because it preserves the structural properties of the monetary system that 150 years of central-bank operating experience have validated. The less-polite reading is that the framing is a deliberate counter to the US-led GENIUS Act stablecoin regime, which permits private-sector USD payment stablecoins as a parallel monetary instrument outside the unified-ledger model. Both readings are present in the policy literature.

Recommendations to central banks

The chapter sets out four concrete recommendations for central banks pursuing the unified-ledger model. First, articulate a vision for the tokenised ecosystem features the central bank wants to anchor (which assets sit on the unified ledger, which intermediaries can issue or hold tokenised liabilities, which settlement assets are eligible). Second, establish the regulatory and legal frameworks that allow the tokenised forms of bank money, central-bank money, and government bonds to operate as the operative records rather than reference shadows of off-chain registers. Third, provide the foundational asset (tokenised central-bank reserves) on the unified ledger so the system has a settlement anchor. Fourth, foster public-private partnerships to build the ecosystem above the foundation rather than build it as a state monopoly (AER 2025 Chapter III).

The recommendations are read across APAC as direct framing for regulator moves already in flight. HKMA's EnsembleTX tiered-ledger architecture, with the trajectory toward 24/7 tokenised CeBM settlement, maps cleanly onto the unified-ledger blueprint. MAS's GL1 proposition addresses the public-private-partnership recommendation. The Bank of Korea wholesale CBDC programme under Hyun Song Shin's leadership is structurally aligned with the BIS framing because Hyun Song Shin co-authored much of the underlying intellectual foundation while at BIS.

How the blueprint reads against APAC stablecoin regimes

The blueprint's stablecoin critique sits in productive tension with the Hong Kong Stablecoins Ordinance regime, which permits permissioned issuance of fiat-referenced stablecoins under HKMA licensing (Cap. 656), and with the MAS Single-Currency Stablecoin framework, which permits SGD or G10-currency stablecoins under MPI licensing. The tension is not a contradiction; both regimes admit stablecoins under tighter constraints (HQLA reserves at par, segregated, redeemable, no interest, supervised issuer) than the blueprint's "stablecoin proliferation" caricature, and a regulated stablecoin under either regime is structurally closer to the blueprint's tokenised-commercial-bank-money element than to the unconstrained bearer-instrument framing the chapter critiques.

What the blueprint does is privilege the tokenised-deposit and tokenised-CBDC pairing over a stablecoin-led alternative as the future-state architecture. APAC operators reading the blueprint should treat it as the BIS expressing a preference, not as a statement that regulated stablecoins are foreclosed. The pragmatic operator reading is that the regulated-stablecoin perimeters under HK and Singapore frameworks survive the blueprint, but the future-state weight inside the institutional tokenisation conversation continues to shift toward the tokenised-deposit and tokenised-CBDC pairing (EnsembleTX is the worked example).

The Japanese framing is less neat. The Japanese trust-route stablecoins under Progmat (Progmat architecture) are structurally hybrid: bankruptcy-remote trust property as the reserve, beneficiary-tracked transfer logic as the on-chain mechanic. They satisfy the integrity test that the blueprint privileges, and they preserve singleness through the trust-redemption-at-par mechanic. They are arguably already inside the blueprint's spirit if not its letter.

Open questions

Whether the BIS publishes a follow-on AER chapter or working paper that addresses agentic commerce on the unified ledger. The AER 2025 chapter does not engage with AI agents holding tokenised cash or transacting with tokenised assets, despite the BIS having published separate work on AI in central banking through 2025-2026.
The interaction between the blueprint and the GENIUS Act permitted-payment-stablecoin regime. The blueprint's framing privileges tokenised commercial-bank money over stablecoins; GENIUS privileges permitted-issuer USD payment stablecoins. The BIS has not published a consolidated paper reconciling the two postures.
Whether subsequent BIS work formalises the unified-ledger model into a CPMI-IOSCO or BCBS standard, or whether the AER 2025 chapter remains the highest-fidelity version of the framing.
The role of permissionless DeFi infrastructure in the blueprint's future state. The chapter is permissioned by construction; whether public-blockchain rails can plug into the unified ledger as adjunct surfaces is unaddressed.
The substantive reconciliation between the blueprint and the DBS-Kinexys interoperability framework, which is a bilateral cross-bank tokenised-deposit bridge running partly on a public chain (JPMD on Base). The framework is structurally inside the blueprint's preferred two-tier architecture but the public-chain leg is in productive tension with the blueprint's permissioned-by-default framing.
Whether the BIS Innovation Hub portfolio under Mancini-Griffoli re-prioritises pilot work toward the unified-ledger model after his March 2026 start.

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BIS unified-ledger blueprint (AER 2025, Chapter III)