The future of payments depends on trust said CySEC Chairman, George Theocharides, and CBC’s Executive Member, George Karatzias, in their speech on cryptoassets trends, in the Cryptocurrency, Digital Assets and the Future of Finance Summit 2026, entitled ‘Money in transition: reshaping payments for a digital generation’ held on Tuesday in Limassol. The two officials talked of the importance of supervision during a time of a structural transformation in the financial markets.
Theocharides noted that cryptoassets are no longer operating at the periphery of financial markets. ‘They are increasingly embedded within the broader financial ecosystem, interacting with traditional instruments, regulated intermediaries, and institutional investors.’
This, he said, is not a temporary trend, but a structural shift in how markets are organised, how assets are structured and issued, and how investment exposure is accessed.
According to CySEC Chairman, digital assets are increasingly being absorbed within mainstream traditional financial intermediation channels rather than operating outside them,’ he noted.
The Chairman noted that these developments have raised important supervisory considerations regarding valuation integrity, custody arrangements, liquidity risk, as well as market manipulation in underlying spot markets.
‘From a regulatory perspective, the objective is not to replace existing systems, but to ensure that new technologies operate within the same core principles of financial regulation,’ he said.
In this respect, he added, MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) represents a landmark development in global financial regulation, since for the first time, a comprehensive and harmonised framework has been established for crypto-asset issuance and service provision across a major economic area.
As he said, MiCA already provides greater legal certainty, reduces fragmentation across Member States, and establishes a solid foundation for supervisory convergence, while signaling a clear policy choice: that innovation in digital finance should take place within a regulated environment that prioritises market integrity, financial stability, and investor protection.
Theocharides said that regulation must be technology-neutral, with a focus on risks, outcomes, and behaviour, rather than on specific technologies. Additionally, he said that regulatory frameworks must be robust enough to protect investors and ensure market integrity, while remaining sufficiently flexible to allow innovation and competition to flourish. Supervisory convergence and international cooperation are indispensable, he highlighted.
Cyprus, as a member of the European Union and the Eurozone financial architecture, is well positioned to act as a bridge between traditional financial services and emerging digital finance, he noted, adding that over the past decades, Cyprus has developed a strong and credible regulatory framework for investment services, fund management, and capital markets activities, fully aligned with European standards.
At the same time, it has achieved a growing engagement with financial innovation, including fintech developments, digital assets, and new market infrastructures, he pointed out.
‘CySEC’s role is to ensure that this evolution takes place within a framework that safeguards investor confidence, promotes market integrity, and supports sustainable development of the financial sector,’ he said, concluding that the challenge is to ensure that innovation serves the real economy, strengthens financial stability, and enhances trust in capital markets.
George Karatzias, Executive Board Member of the Central Bank of Cyprus, focused on the fact that digital money is no longer theoretical, but become part of the architecture of finance, the fact that innovation in money requires supervision, and that Europe must ensure that the future of payments remains anchored in public trust.
The Eurosystem aims to shape and ground a European, sovereign and integrated digital asset ecosystem around central bank money, aiming at a balanced landscape, where public and private forms of money coexist, each contributing in its own way to a more efficient, resilient and competitive European financial system, he said.
Referring to stablecoins, Karatzias said that they are now increasingly used as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto markets, highlighting however that ‘scale brings responsibility, and responsibility requires supervision’. From a supervisory standpoint, he said, the question is why a stablecoin should be trusted to remain stable under stress.
Through MiCA, he said, Europe has established a comprehensive framework for crypto-assets, introducing requirements on authorisation, transparency, disclosure, supervision, market integrity and consumer protection.
‘The European philosophy is one of regulated innovation,’ he noted, mentioning that if stablecoins perform a monetary function, they must meet a monetary standard of resilience, transparency and accountability.
Additionally, he said that the stablecoin market remains overwhelmingly foreign currency denominated, while euro-denominated stablecoins still play only a minor role. ‘For Europe, this raises questions of currency substitution, external infrastructure dependency and monetary sovereignty,’ he stressed, adding that properly regulated euro-denominated stablecoin initiatives may therefore have a role to play, as part of a broader European architecture underpinned by trusted public money.
According to Karatzias, the broader transformation of payments and market infrastructures is the reason why Europe has chosen to respond by building the legal, supervisory and institutional foundations for responsible innovation.
Referring to the digital euro, he said that it is being designed to work seamlessly with commercial bank accounts to provide a pan-European retail payment option that would reduce dependence on non-European payment solutions and strengthen our resilience and autonomy.
He noted that the ECB plans to run a 12-month pilot in the second half of 2027 to test a beta version of the digital euro, including real-life situations such as making in-shop or person-to-person payment. As he said, further clarity is expected from the ECB soon on the potential participation of Cypriot market participants that have expressed interest in the pilot.
‘The future of money may be digital, programmable and instant. But it must also remain safe, interoperable and anchored in the euro. That is how we preserve trust – not only in payments, but in money itself,’ he concluded.