Israel's Capital Market Authority has approved BILS, the country's first regulated shekel-pegged stablecoin, Coindesk reported on April 28, 2026. The token will be issued by Bits of Gold, a licensed financial asset service provider, and goes live under strict supervisory conditions following a roughly two-year sandbox pilot on Solana.
What got approved
BILS is pegged 1:1 to the new Israeli shekel. Reserve assets sit inside Israel in designated, segregated accounts, and the regulator can audit how those reserves are managed. Issuance starts in a limited format at a predetermined scale, meaning Bits of Gold cannot simply mint into open market demand on day one. The Authority kept a leash on supply so any operational failure stays contained.
The pilot ran on Solana, which carried over into the production design. That makes BILS one of the few national-currency stablecoins to launch on a public chain with regulatory blessing rather than a permissioned ledger.
Why the Capital Market Authority took its time
The Bank of Israel has spent years stress-testing what a digital shekel should look like. In December 2025, governor Amir Yaron warned that stablecoin growth was already systemic enough to require improved oversight, even as the central bank kept its own digital shekel project on the table.
BILS arrives as the private-sector answer first. Rather than wait for a CBDC, the Authority approved a private issuer on tight terms: licensed entity, in-country reserves, segregated accounts, capped issuance, and continuous supervision. It is closer to the European MiCA model for e-money tokens than to the looser US framework where issuers operate under state trust charters with varying disclosure standards.
For Bits of Gold, which has held an Israeli financial services license since 2018, this is a regulatory milestone that was hard-won. Israeli banks spent years refusing to service crypto firms over AML concerns, and several court fights forced banks to keep accounts open. Approval to issue a regulated shekel stablecoin is the most explicit endorsement the Israeli system has given a domestic crypto company to date.
What the shekel on-chain actually unlocks
The shekel is a top-20 global currency by FX volume and one of the better-performing fiat units of the past five years. Putting it on a public chain in regulated form gives a few new options:
- Israeli fintechs can settle B2B payments in tokenized shekels without going through the slower interbank rails.
- Cross-border remittance corridors into Israel, particularly from the US, could route through BILS rather than convert through dollar stablecoins twice.
- DeFi protocols on Solana now have a non-USD, non-EUR fiat reference asset to build markets around.
Whether any of that materializes depends on liquidity and on whether the Authority lifts the cap. For now, BILS is closer to a controlled rollout than a free-floating product. Bits of Gold has not published the initial supply ceiling.
How this fits the broader stablecoin map
The launch lands the same week that stablecoin transfers crossed $1 trillion in monthly volume according to DefiLlama's new tracker, and as US lawmakers continue to debate federal stablecoin rules. Most of that volume sits in dollar-denominated tokens. Non-dollar regulated stablecoins remain rare: a handful of euro tokens under MiCA, a few sterling experiments, and now BILS.
Israel's choice to authorize a private issuer on a public chain, rather than wait for the central bank's own digital shekel, is the more consequential signal. It suggests the Authority sees regulated private stablecoins as the practical path for everyday payments and reserves the CBDC question for wholesale or settlement use cases.
Overview
Israel's Capital Market Authority has approved BILS, a shekel-pegged stablecoin issued by licensed firm Bits of Gold, after a roughly two-year Solana pilot. The token is 1:1 backed by reserves held in segregated Israeli accounts, with issuance capped at launch and continuous regulatory oversight. It is the first fully regulated shekel stablecoin and one of the few non-USD fiat tokens approved on a public chain.
