Report · 2026

Anchoring trust in money: innovation beyond stablecoins

Bank for International Settlements · BIS Annual Economic Report 2026, Chapter III · Bank for International Settlements

The BIS's flagship annual report argues that stablecoins as currently designed fail to deliver the singleness, elasticity, and integrity of money, and that the path forward is tokenising central bank and commercial bank money on unified ledgers rather than relying on private stablecoins.

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Research questionCan stablecoins serve as sound money, and how should tokenisation be integrated into the monetary system without undermining trust and monetary sovereignty?

MethodologyInstitutional analysis and macroeconomic modelling presented in a BIS Annual Economic Report chapter.

Key findings

Stablecoins operate without the institutional underpinnings — central bank backing, guaranteed par redeemability, and an elastic supply of liquidity — that give money its singleness.
Stablecoins on permissionless chains, with pseudonymity and unhosted wallets, create AML/CFT and financial-integrity gaps and regulatory-arbitrage risk.
Fragmentation across multiple blockchain networks undermines the interoperability and network effects needed for money-like functionality.
Modelling suggests the net macroeconomic effect of widespread stablecoin adoption is modest, but reserve composition matters: government-bill holdings pose different financial-stability risks than bank deposits or central bank reserves.
In emerging markets, foreign-currency stablecoin adoption threatens monetary sovereignty and can erode the domestic currency's unit-of-account role if substitution deepens from store-of-value into transaction settlement.
The recommended path is to integrate tokenisation into the regulated two-tier system via 'unified ledgers' hosting tokenised central bank reserves, commercial bank deposits, and other supervised private monies.

Limitations: A policy-and-analysis chapter reflecting the BIS's institutional viewpoint rather than an independent peer-reviewed study; modelling assumptions are stylised.

Topics: Financial Stability & Systemic Risk · Monetary Policy & Banking · Dollarization & Emerging Markets

Cite this

Bank for International Settlements (2026). Anchoring trust in money: innovation beyond stablecoins BIS Annual Economic Report 2026, Chapter III.

BibTeX

@techreport{bis2026anchoringtrustinmoney,
  title = {Anchoring trust in money: innovation beyond stablecoins},
  author = {Bank for International Settlements},
  year = {2026},
  institution = {Bank for International Settlements},
  howpublished = {BIS Annual Economic Report 2026, Chapter III},
  url = {https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2026e3.htm},
  note = {Indexed by Stablecoin Beat},
}

Indexed by Stablecoin Beat — we link to and summarise sources; we do not host copyrighted full text, and summaries are our own. · All research · Methodology