A BIS PAPER SAYS BITCOIN REMOVES ‘TRUST IN AN ISSUER’ — ITS COMPLAINT ABOUT ENDLESS ISSUANCE IS ABOUT EVERY OTHER TOKEN — ONE AUTHOR, NOT THE BANK’S VIEW

The Bank for International Settlements published BIS Paper 175, “Money and the architecture of trust,” on October 14, 2026. It runs 43 pages and has one author, Iñaki Aldasoro of the BIS Monetary and Economic Department. The front matter says the views are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the BIS or its member central banks. The thesis: money is a system of promises held up by central banks, credit and public backstops.

Bitcoin gets one section and a footnote. The paper quotes the white paper’s aim, payments “based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,” and then concedes the point: “What the design removes, though, is trust in an issuer rather than trust itself.” It says bitcoin’s fixed supply and issuance schedule are “unresponsive to any conceivable state of the world,” with no lender of last resort to add more when everyone wants to settle.

The next sentence says “coins and tokens are issued continually and with essentially no constraint.” Its footnote says CoinMarketCap ranks around 8,000 actively traded assets and CoinGecko tracks some 18,600. That charge lands on everything except bitcoin, whose schedule the sentence before just called fixed. The paper accuses crypto of too little stretch and too much issuance at once. Bitcoin is only accused of the first.

That first charge is the real argument. A money that cannot be expanded in a crisis is one the state cannot use to cover its debts or rescue its banks. The paper calls the wish for an asset that is no one’s liability “a desire to exit the social compact.” On the facts, the economist and the bitcoiner agree: no issuer, no promise, supply set by code. They disagree on whether that is a flaw. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $82,282.