| Article | Published |
|---|---|
| Digital Euro vs Open StablecoinsEurope's digital money debate is not a binary contest between a digital euro and crypto. It is a choice among four architectures: a retail CBDC, bank-led euro stablecoins such as the Qivalis consortium, tokenized deposits, and open stablecoin rails. The ECB has cleared a key parliamentary step for the digital euro, but holding caps and bank-centric distribution may limit its competitive force, while euro stablecoins still account for only about 0.3 percent of a roughly $300 billion market. The real question is whether digital payments become open, competitive infrastructure or get rebuilt around a few public and bank-controlled gateways. The better path is open discipline: strict reserves, enforceable redemption, bankruptcy remoteness, interoperability, and privacy safeguards across all digital money models. | 20 min |
| Stablecoin Yield and the New Deposit WarBank of America's Brian Moynihan warns that yield-bearing stablecoins could pull up to $6 trillion out of bank deposits, threatening deposit-funded lending. But deposits do not leave the financial system; they are reallocated into reserves, Treasury bills, repo, and money market funds. A White House analysis finds a yield ban would lift bank lending by only ~0.02 percent while costing savers, and IMF research points to the Treasury market, not deposit drain, as the more important channel. The real fight is over who captures the economics of digital cash, and the better answer is safe competition under strict prudential rules rather than a blunt yield prohibition. | 20 min |
| Japan's Megabank Stablecoin Test: What Yen Stablecoins Mean for Digital PaymentsJapan's three megabanks, MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho, plan to jointly issue stablecoins by March 2027 under FSA supervision. The plan is less a copy of the dollar stablecoin market than a test of a bank-led model in which regulated yen stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and programmable payments are built from regulation outward. The decisive question is market design: whether Japan can issue digital money that is regulated enough to be credible yet open and interoperable enough to be useful, rather than a closed bank rail with blockchain branding. | 19 min |
| Stablecoin Banking: The New Battle for Deposits, Payments and LicensesStablecoins are migrating from crypto-market liquidity into the operating logic of banking, payments, custody, and licensing. Around Money20/20 Europe 2026, banks, neobanks, payment firms, and trust-chartered infrastructure providers converged on four competing models for regulated digital money. The market remains highly concentrated and almost entirely dollar-denominated, with a small number of USD tokens holding the large majority of supply and non-dollar tokens a negligible share. The decisive battleground is now licensing, reserves, deposit competition, and control of the customer interface. | 22 min |