There can be both a strategic and a practical answer to the same question. That’s what EU lawmakers are finding out in real time after the European Parliament’s ECON Committee approved a European Central Bank plan to introduce a digital euro by 2029.
For Europe, the strategic question is no longer whether blockchain-based financing will coexist with traditional banking, but rather which forms of digital money will solve which institutional problems. The practical question is whether sovereignty, deposit insurance, cross-border settlement, securities tokenization and machine-to-machine trading can coexist in a landscape built on the fly by banks, regulators and infrastructure providers in the hope of avoiding the creation of the same financial silos that defined the payments ecosystem of yesterday.
“The current way money moves is being completely reshaped,” Taurus co-founder and managing partner Lamine Brahimi told PYMNTS.
“Most credit card payments in the eurozone are processed through American credit card systems. And for me, the digital euro is a way to offer an alternative,” he said.
The result is not a single future of money. It is a sorting process.
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The digital euro doesn’t try to do everything
The digital money debate is often described as a competition between central bank digital currencies, tokenized deposits and stablecoins. Brahimi sees something more specific: a market that is starting to split into different layers, each solving a different problem for a different constituency.
“These are very different animals,” he said, describing the digital euro, tokenized bank deposits and stablecoins, and pointing out that “the digital euro is not necessarily based on blockchain.”
This distinction is important because the next phase of digital money may not be won by a single format. Instead, it can be defined by how sovereign money, commercial bank money and freely transferable on-chain money coexist.
More important, Lamini added, is the counterparty behind the digital euro. A consumer or company that owns digital euros would not have a claim against a commercial bank, but rather against a central bank.
“You or I as a holder of a digital euro technically have central bank counterparty risk, which by definition is zero,” he said.
This logic makes the digital euro most relevant for retail payments and small business use cases. It also fundamentally distinguishes the digital euro from a tokenized deposit and also explains why the European public sector project is moving forward despite banks developing their own alternatives. A digital euro in the form discussed may not meet all institutional requirements.
The movement of money is being rebuilt, not copied
The digital euro may dominate political debate abroad, but it is just one layer in a broader reconstruction. Banks are developing tokenized deposits to keep commercial bank funds relevant in digital markets, while stablecoins are becoming a settlement tool for open, always-on trading.
Brahimi added that tokenized securities are currently looking for an on-chain cash fork to scale.
He said tokenizing a security is only half the problem. If the security is on-chain but the cash branch is stuck in the old settlement infrastructure, the efficiency gain is limited. Without this institutional realignment, tokenized listed stocks risk remaining more of a technical experiment than a change in market structure. The improvement must be significant: 24/7 trading, lower costs or a significantly better settlement model. Otherwise, tokenization adds a new wrapper without changing the underlying economics.
Of course, the next user of digital money may not be human at all. As AI agents begin acting on behalf of companies, customers, and institutions, they need ways to verify actions, build trust, and share value. Brahimi does not see artificial intelligence as a threat to digital asset infrastructure. He sees this as a reason why infrastructure is becoming more important.
“Distributed ledgers [can be] strong support for AI activities, just to create a basic level of trust between your agent and my agent,” he said.
This layer of trust is important because AI agents trained by different companies, jurisdictions, or systems may not inherently trust each other. A shared ledger can provide a record of what happened. Once agents can verify the activity, payment is the next step. Brahimi said he expects “machines to talk to machines and also exchange values.”
This gives stablecoins a different role than tokenized deposits. Tokenized deposits can serve banks and their institutional customers. Stablecoins could become more useful in open, programmable environments where counterparties, platforms and agents require money that can be moved across networks.
The post-quantum problem is already on the roadmap
There is another infrastructure issue that affects all forms of digital money: post-quantum security. Brahimi warned that the cryptographic foundations of digital asset systems will need to evolve as quantum computing advances.
“All the signatures, like the core of the nuclear power plant and the way the cryptography is done, need to be retooled,” he said.
This migration will not be theoretical. It could result in institutions and investors moving assets from old addresses to new post-Quantum Secure addresses. For banks, asset managers and infrastructure providers, the implication is clear: digital asset readiness is not just about regulatory approvals or product launches. It’s about whether the security architecture can survive the next computing age.
“Anyone who is serious about digital assets [needs] “We actually have to look at it now,” said Brahimi.
After all, the real question is not whether the digital euro, tokenized deposits or stablecoins will win. It’s about which institutions can control and secure which emerging layer of the new money stack.
Watch the full PYMNTS TV interview with Taurus co-founder Lamine Brahimi to learn more about:
- Why the digital euro, tokenized deposits and stablecoins solve different problems.According to Brahimi, the digital euro is primarily about sovereignty and retail payments, while tokenized deposits protect commercial bank deposits and stablecoins are for open, transferable, on-chain settlement.
- How tokenized deposits will become banks’ answer to the flight of deposits and the flow of money around the clock.The discussion explores why banks are building tokenized deposits to defend against competition from stablecoins while enabling instant cross-border settlement from New York to Singapore to Dubai without traditional cutoff times.
- Why AI agents and post-quantum security could define the next phase of digital money.Brahimi argues that distributed ledgers can create trust between AI agents as machines begin exchanging value, while warning that digital asset infrastructure must now prepare for a cryptographic reset following quantum theory.
https://www.pymnts.com/news/payments-innovation/2026/europe-wants-its-own-digital-money-moment/
