Tag Archives: stablecoin

In his Financial Times Free Lunch column, Martin Sandbu discusses our recent Barcelona report (with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, and Xavier Vives). He writes: “The introduction is as good a guide to the main policy issues as I have seen. In particular, it helpfully directs our focus not so much to the technical possibilities digitisation brings as to what they mean for who is empowered and enriched by the systemic changes that can follow…” Martin continues: “It gives a nuanced...

CEPR eBook, with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, Xavier Vives. 2 June 2026. PDF, HTML. Column: New Coins on the Block: Digital Currencies and the Financial System (with Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, and Xavier Vives). VoxEU, June 2, 2026. HTML. The crypto system is no longer a sideshow. Dollar stablecoins now put dollar claims into circulation well beyond the regulated US banking perimeter, and cryptoisation is beginning to transform the international monetary and financial system. This...

CEPR eBook, 12 November 2025. PDF, HTML.

CEPR eBook, 12 November 2025. PDF, HTML. VoxEU column: Frontiers of Digital Finance: A Global Perspective. HTML. VoxEU column: Frontiers of Digital Finance: Stablecoins, monetary ‘singleness’, tokenisation, and decentralised finance. HTML. My introduction to/summary of the book: The digitisation of payment, trading, and settlement systems is reshaping the financial architecture. New technologies are transforming how value is created, stored, transferred, and accounted for, altering the...

What’s left? The new plans envision Several stablecoins tied to existing fiat currencies rather than (or in addition to) to the originally planned currency basket. No more “permissionless” transactions, no more “censorship resistance.” Vetting of new wallets by the operator (KYC, AML). The new Libra White Paper. Teunis Brosens and Carlo Cozucco in ING’s THINK. Kiran Stacey and Hannah Murphy in the FT. Philip Sandner and Jonas Gross in Medium.

The BIS has published a report on stablecoins. On Alphaville Izabella Kaminska approves but argues that the report does not contain novel points. One aspect discussed in the report concerns the benefit of stablecoins for cross-border payments; it may be limited unless technology is able to address the key friction: A major obstacle to the interlinking of domestic payment systems and/or the development of shared global payment platforms is differing legal frameworks across jurisdictions...

In the FT, Robert Armstrong reports about the new “JPM coin” launched by JP Morgan. “JPM Coins” will be transferable over a blockchain between the accounts of the bank’s corporate clients, who will purchase and redeem them for dollars at a fixed 1:1 ratio, making them “stablecoins” in the crypto-jargon. The technology will facilitate near-instantaneous settlement of these money transfers and will, according to the bank, mitigate counterparty risk. According to my reading, the coins are...

In the FT, Robert Armstrong reports about the new “JPM coin” launched by JP Morgan. “JPM Coins” will be transferable over a blockchain between the accounts of the bank’s corporate clients, who will purchase and redeem them for dollars at a fixed 1:1 ratio, making them “stablecoins” in the crypto-jargon. The technology will facilitate near-instantaneous settlement of these money transfers and will, according to the bank, mitigate counterparty risk. According to my reading, the coins are...

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away we wrote a series of articles arguing that bitcoin is not money and is not sound. Bitcoin was skyrocketing at the time, as we wrote most of them between July 30 and Oct 1 last year. Back in those halcyon days, volatility was deemed to be a feature. That is, volatility in the upward direction was loved by everyone who said that bitcoin is money, in their desire to make money. In...