The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has appointed Tommaso Mancini-Grifoli, one of the world’s most influential economists on digital money, as the next director of the BIS Innovation Hub, effective March 2026.
BIS announced on Tuesday that Mancini-Grifoli will “lead the work to explore technical solutions for innovation within the central banking community.” His responsibilities are expected to include continued work on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized assets, and new forms of market infrastructure.
Mr. Mancini-Grifoli is currently the Assistant Director of the International Monetary Fund’s Department of Monetary and Capital Markets, where he leads payments and currency operations. He is one of the IMF’s most prominent voices advocating for a regulated and publicly backed digital money model, and has previously warned of the risks of unregulated stablecoins.
The appointment comes as the BIS Innovation Hub strengthens its core projects and expands its impact across global centres. The hub is a testing ground for prototype blockchain-inspired payment systems and digital currencies.
For the cryptocurrency space, this move suggests that BIS could steer digital asset innovation towards regulated tokenized money, a direction that could shape the way central banks evaluate private blockchain infrastructure and stablecoins.
Incoming innovation chief defends synthetic CBDC
Mancini Grifoli, who has represented the IMF at global policy forums on CBDCs and payments, has frequently argued that the most stable path forward lies in hybrid or publicly backed arrangements rather than fully private tokens.
In 2020, Mancini-Grifoli said that comprehensive public-private partnership CBDCs could enable private sector innovations such as blockchain-backed stablecoins.
He championed the concept of a synthetic CBDC, a model in which private institutions issue digital money fully backed by central bank reserves, essentially fusing public sector security with private sector innovation.
He also supported tokenized financial products, but only if they operate within a public funding architecture that guarantees system stability and settlement finality.
In an essay in September, Mancini-Grifoli argued that stablecoins carry structural risks if they are not backed by safe assets and strong governance.
He warned that poorly regulated issuers could expose users to bank runs, liquidity discrepancies and loss of value.
Related: JP Morgan launches DBS iDeposit token as cross-bank alternative to stablecoins
BIS Innovation Hub’s high-profile experiments
The BIS Innovation Hub is currently running several high-profile digital currency experiments.
This includes the cross-border CBDC payment network mBridge, the tokenized deposit infrastructure Agora, and the real-time payments and interoperable CBDC rail called Project Nexus.
These projects demonstrate BIS’s commitment to rethinking traditional finance with blockchain-inspired architectures.
Under Mancini-Grifoli, the innovation hub is poised to accelerate several high-impact initiatives, from cross-border payment networks to tokenized deposits and interoperable CBDCs.
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