BIS says stablecoins act more like ETFs than money, warns divergent national rules risk fragmenting the market

BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos used a Bank of Japan speech in Tokyo today to argue stablecoins behave more like ETFs than real money — their peg depends on a small group of authorized arbitrageurs that mirror ETF authorized participants, not on universal redemption. He warned divergent national frameworks (GENIUS Act, MiCA, Hong Kong) will either fragment the market or enable regulatory arbitrage, and again pushed BIS's preferred alternative: tokenized deposits plus wholesale CBDCs rather than private dollar stablecoins. It's the latest shot from the central bank of central banks at the "stablecoins as digital money" narrative.

TLDR by @Benthic

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