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Stablecoins as power
Leaders and central bankers are weighing stablecoins as a way to “broaden the dollar's global role,” with Le Grand Continent arguing that the strategy is meant to weather uncertainty driven by “the sanctions and freezing of the Russian central bank's reserves.”
In an interview with Le Monde.fr, economist Eric Monnet warned that if the United States succeeds in pushing stablecoins, the outcome would be “a risk of monetary vassalage.”
Monnet said stablecoins would be a “major rupture” because they link a payment system to a foreign currency, “namely the dollar,” which he described as equivalent to “the whole world using dollar banknotes.”
Le Grand Continent framed the debate as Europe’s need to reinforce its own role, arguing that “Europe’s strategy, for its part, is still undefined,” even as the ECB president Christine Lagarde has expressed an ambition to create a “world euro.”
Central bankers split
At the 32nd Dubrovnik Economics Conference, Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said stablecoins “expand the reach of US policy,” arguing that countries relying on dollar-backed stablecoins may effectively import US monetary conditions.
Waller also told participants, “I've always just looked at stablecoins as a payment instrument; there's nothing evil about it, nothing dangerous about it,” while Cointelegraph reported that Reuters characterized his view as bringing “competition into the payments world.”
Bank of England policymaker Megan Greene offered a contrary outlook, saying stablecoins could fade from view “in a matter of a few years.”
Greene said she expects tokenized deposits to take over, adding, “five years from now, I suspect we might wonder why we were talking about stablecoins,” and Cointelegraph reported Reuters framing her as a “massive race between the tortoise, the hare and the rhino.”
Policy battles ahead
In the United States, debate over stablecoin yield has stymied progress on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which Cointelegraph said passed out of the Senate Banking Committee on May 15 but was still unclear for 2026 due to opposition from the banking lobby and the looming US midterm elections.
Cointelegraph reported that Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis warned Saturday that the US will lose its leadership position in crypto to other countries, including China, if lawmakers fail to pass the legislation this year, quoting her: “America built the dollar-dominated financial system that has anchored global stability for a century.”
Le Grand Continent described stablecoins and other private-issuer cryptocurrencies as part of a “crypto-mercantilist strategy” to reinforce the dollar, but it cautioned that “nothing guarantees that this crypto-mercantilist strategy will produce the expected results.”
Meanwhile, LVSL described Donald Trump’s second-term push as cryptomercantilism, noting that on January 17, 2025, “200 million digital tokens bearing Donald Trump’s image were put up for sale” and that the price rose from $6 to $75 in two days before collapsing to $7.5 by mid-April.
