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Israel approved BILS on April 28, 2026, giving Bits of Gold clearance to launch the first regulated shekel-pegged stablecoin after two years inside a supervised sandbox on Solana. The approval came from the Capital Market, Insurance, and Savings Authority. It gives Israel’s private crypto sector a live product while the Bank of Israel still works from a blueprint.
BILS tracks the Israeli new shekel at a 1:1 ratio. Each token corresponds to one shekel held in segregated bank accounts inside Israel. Ernst & Young audits the reserves. Bits of Gold issues the token and brings more than 250,000 active clients from its regulated crypto brokerage business.
The company has held a license since 2013. Its approval gives Israel a regulated stablecoin before formal legislation reaches the market.
Fireblocks manages BILS custody. The same infrastructure serves Worldpay, BNY Mellon, Visa, and the Qivalis consortium of 12 European banks.
Qivalis is building a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin. Its members include UniCredit and Banca Sella, according to the details provided. BILS also integrates Zero Knowledge Proofs developed by QEDIT. The technology supports operational privacy while keeping the product inside a regulated framework.
QEDIT also works with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Project Eden. That project involved Israel’s first tokenized government bond, issued by the Ministry of Finance.
The Capital Market Authority did not rely only on a theoretical model. It observed BILS under real-world sandbox conditions for two years before approval. That path differs from jurisdictions using top-down regulatory control. Italy and Germany have pursued a proposed kill switch for foreign stablecoins under EBA and MiCA.
Meanwhile, Israel now has a live regulated stablecoin months before any formal law. The draft Stablecoin Law is still heading toward public consultation. BILS still carries one structural issue. It settles on Solana, which operates outside Israeli jurisdiction and depends on validators the regulator cannot control.
The authority can bind Bits of Gold through regulation. Yet it cannot compel Solana validators to restore service during a network outage.
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The global stablecoin market exceeds $230 billion, according to CoinGecko data cited in the report. More than 99% of that value links to the U.S. dollar. USDT and USDC still dominate the sector. Even so, Israel’s timing follows a strong year for the shekel.
The shekel gained more than 20% against the dollar over the past year, according to Visual Capitalist. That made it the top-performing currency among economies above $250 billion in GDP. Annual global stablecoin volume has reached $46 trillion, according to figures cited in the Bits of Gold press release. That scale gives BILS relevance beyond Israel’s domestic market.
Bits of Gold said bringing the shekel on-chain places it beside the euro, yen, and Singapore dollar in blockchain-based financial systems.
The next signal will come from institutional adoption. An integration by an Israeli bank or asset manager within six months would serve as a real-world compliance test for BILS.
Israel’s approval of BILS gives the country its first regulated shekel-backed stablecoin and places Bits of Gold ahead of the Bank of Israel’s digital shekel plans. With audited reserves, Fireblocks custody and Solana settlement, BILS now faces its next major test: institutional adoption.
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