TheTechno Optimist.

Project AgoraBank for International Settlements—BIS announces 8 central banks and 40+ institutions will participate in Project Agora real-value testingProject AgoraBank for International Settlements—Project Agora real-value testing settles $1 million across 6 currencies with 28 institutions

Bank for International Settlements

Central bank cooperation, tokenized settlement

CHgovernmentest. 1930bis.org (opens bis.org)Checked 11 Oct

The brief

Analyst view
  • BIS is owned by 60 central banks and provides banking and financial services to them and international financial institutions.
  • Agora showed that tokenized payments can settle atomically across currencies and jurisdictions.
  • 2026 real-value tests: 28 institutions (5 central banks and 23 financial institutions) settled $1 million in ~80 seconds.

Technical approach

As reported
Tokenization

Central bank digital reserves

Central banks tokenize reserves on a shared ledger, representing claims on their currencies for real-time bank transacting.

Settlement

Atomic cross-currency settlement

Transactions settle all-or-nothing: either both send and receive complete or neither does, eliminating settlement risk.

Speed

80-second multi-currency settlement

Tests showed transactions clear in ~80 seconds versus days in traditional banking.

Primer