The Bank for International Settlements argued that stablecoins still do not measure up as money in its Annual Economic Report 2026, released Sunday at its yearly general meeting in Basel, Switzerland.
In a chapter titled "Anchoring trust in money: innovation beyond stablecoins," the report judges today's dollar-pegged tokens against foundational properties the BIS holds that any monetary system must keep, including singleness, elasticity, interoperability, and integrity. Current designs come up short on all of those, the authors argue.
Stablecoin prices deviate from their pegs in secondary markets and their redemptions involve friction, the report said, arguing that the tokens resemble exchange-traded fund shares more than they do a means of payment. That framing resembles comments from BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos, who in April described stablecoins as functioning more like ETFs than money.
Overall stablecoin supply remains relatively small next to the banking system. The BIS put total market value at roughly $320 billion at the end of May, with more than 99% of fiat-backed supply pegged to the U.S. dollar and most of it split between Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC.
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