Central banks, get ready (or not) for the US stablecoin boom

Written by John Orchard, Chairman of the Digital Monetary Institute, and Lewis McLellan, Editor at the Digital Monetary Institute at OMFIF

A key official whose job it is to consider the digitalisation of money at a developed world central bank returned from the Spring International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings with a deep sense of unease. While unperturbed by the customary condescension from ‘crypto-native’ digital assets disruptors at closed-door meetings, this person instead came away profoundly unsettled from similar gatherings of central bankers discussing the potentially radical implications of the forthcoming Genius Act - the US stablecoin bill expected to become law in 2025. This was put in motion by Donald Trump’s 23 January executive order, which set out for the US to lead the world in blockchain-based finance, following several years of partisan wrangling and regulatory inertia. The executive order, which is neither policy nor law, has upturned policy assumptions and intentions elsewhere. It contains several provisions of worldwide consequence, particularly the prohibition of central bank digital currencie…