BIS Chief Blasts Stablecoins: 'Do Not Yet Uphold Foundational Properties of Money'
Pablo Hernández de Cos, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), has expressed doubts about the credibility of stablecoins as real money at scale. Speaking at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on August 28, he highlighted four key failures in stablecoins: par redeemability, elasticity, interoperability, and financial integrity.
De Cos pointed out that global stablecoin supply has reached $308 billion this month, with Tether's USDT accounting for approximately 60% of this total. He urged central banks to prioritize tokenized deposits over stablecoins, arguing that they offer a more direct path to harnessing tokenization while preserving the monetary system's foundations.
Tokenized deposits are essentially account-based bank liabilities that settle through central bank reserves and maintain the 'singleness' of money, according to de Cos. He noted that regulators will weigh the benefits of stablecoins against strict monetary-integrity standards before endorsing their wider use.