Yves Mersch said the ECB would look into whether distributed ledger technology, a shared database that can be used to secure and validate any type of transaction, could be adopted as the market infrastructure of the euro zones system of central banks.
The blockchain technology was first used to support virtual currency Bitcoin but has since been tested or even adopted by some brokers and banks for other purposes, such as trading or sharing data.
A report by the Bank for International Settlements published in 2015 said this technology could reduce the need for intermediaries such as banks and settlement houses and even pose a challenge to central banks.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now