The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has appointed Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, one of the world’s most influential economists on digital money, as the next head of the BIS Innovation Hub, effective March 2026.

The BIS said Tuesday that Mancini-Griffoli will “lead work to explore technological solutions within the central bank community on innovation.” His mandate is expected to include ongoing work on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized assets and new forms of market infrastructure.

Mancini-Griffoli currently serves as the assistant director in the International Monetary Fund’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department, where he leads work on payments and currencies. He’s one of the IMF’s most prominent voices advocating for regulated and publicly backed digital money models and has previously warned about the risks of unregulated stablecoins. 

The appointment comes as the BIS Innovation Hub ramps up major projects, expanding its influence across its global centers. The Hub has become a venue for testing blockchain-inspired settlement systems and digital currency prototypes. 

For the crypto space, the move signals that the BIS may steer digital asset innovation toward regulated tokenized money, a direction that could shape how central banks assess private blockchain infrastructure and stablecoins.