BIS CHIEF SAYS $308 BILLION IN STABLECOINS ISN’T REAL MONEY — THE FIX HE WANTS IS BANKS HOLDING YOUR TOKENS INSTEAD

Pablo Hernández de Cos runs the bank that 63 of the world’s central banks own, and at Jackson Hole he told the room that stablecoins — a $308 billion market growing more than 14% a year — still don’t pass as real money. He listed four reasons: they don’t always pay back one-for-one, they don’t flex with demand, they don’t talk to each other well, and they carry integrity risk. Some of that lands. Tether’s USDT alone carries about 60% of the stablecoin market on promises a private company makes about reserves it holds, and that’s a real weakness worth naming. But listen to his fix. Not less digital money — tokenized deposits, the same bank liabilities you already hold, run through new software, still sitting on a bank’s balance sheet, still one bank run away from freezing solid. De Cos isn’t offering neutral money. He’s offering the same banking system in a new coat, asking you to trust it twice. A promise from a bank is still a promise from a bank, tokenized or not.