BIS Chief: Stablecoins Lack Credibility for Large-Scale Payments
nashnova research
BIS General Manager Pablo Hernandez de Cos told the Jackson Hole symposium that stablecoins carry structural flaws that prevent them from serving as credible large-scale payment instruments; he backed tokenized deposits as the more direct path and warned that stablecoin expansion could raise borrowing costs for ordinary people.
What exactly is wrong with stablecoins?
De Cos argued that stablecoins break the "singleness" of money — users switching between different stablecoins face bid-ask costs, meaning a dollar on one platform is not the same dollar on another. In plain terms = two coins both claim to equal $1, but swapping between them costs you money — so they are not really the same currency.
Stablecoin platforms lack genuine interoperability, and anti-money-laundering controls cannot be enforced consistently across them. This means → each stablecoin is effectively an island — neither convenient nor secure.
The widespread adoption of dollar-pegged stablecoins has already raised monetary-sovereignty concerns in some jurisdictions: if non-U.S. borrowers hold large amounts of dollar stablecoins, domestic monetary-policy transmission may weaken, and local financial conditions become more tightly linked to U.S. policy.
Rates may fall — but who pays the price?
De Cos acknowledged that stablecoins may indeed help lower sovereign borrowing costs, as U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent has suggested — because stablecoin issuers need to buy large volumes of government bonds as reserves.
But he warned that funds flowing out of the banking system would push up bank funding costs. This means → governments may borrow more cheaply, but ordinary borrowers could end up paying higher rates.
In plain terms = stablecoins save the treasury money by shifting the cost onto businesses and individuals who borrow from banks.
So what is the alternative?
De Cos advocated tokenized deposits — bank deposits moved onto blockchain rails, but still managed and guaranteed by banks — as the primary tool for everyday payments. This means → the technology is new, but the foundations stay intact: central-bank oversight, deposit insurance, unified settlement.
He sees the two tools coexisting: tokenized deposits for daily payments, stablecoins in a more specialized role.
Tokenized deposits are not a ready-made answer either — interoperability, governance, and legal barriers around settlement still need to be resolved.
Why does this statement carry extra weight?
De Cos is currently one of the leading candidates to succeed Christine Lagarde as ECB president when her term ends next year. This reflects that his remarks are not just a technical opinion — they may preview the ECB's future policy direction on stablecoins.
The venue was the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium — the highest-profile annual gathering of central bankers and economists worldwide. This means → this was not an offhand remark but a systematic rejection of stablecoins delivered on the most important central-banking stage.
Put simply = a front-runner for the next ECB presidency told the world's top central-banking forum that "stablecoins don't work" — the weight of the signal matters more than the words themselves.
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