US banks hold a quiet lever over the stablecoin boom: the rate they pay on savings deposits. A Bank for International Settlements (BIS) working paper quantifies the effect, finding that each one-basis-point rise in deposit rates slows stablecoin growth, and it revives the debate over whether issuers should be allowed to pay yield to holders in Washington.
🔑 Key Takeaways
- A one-basis-point rise in bank deposit rates cuts stablecoin market capitalization growth from about 15% to 12% over a typical ten-week window.
- Under a causal identification method, that growth falls to roughly 6%, but it does not stop.
- The effect is stronger for Circle’s USDC than for Tether’s USDT, reflecting USDC’s closer ties to US users.
- Yield rights and the implementation of the GENIUS Act dominate the US regulatory debate.
A banking lever on stablecoin growth
A stablecoin is a digital token pegged to a reference currency, usually the US dollar, and backed by reserves such as cash, short-term Treasury bills or bank deposits. These tokens serve as trading pairs on exchanges, as cross-border payment instruments and, increasingly, as settlement assets for commercial flows.
The BIS working paper, written by economist Iñaki Aldasoro and Rashad Ahmed of the Andersen Institute for Finance and Economics, uses weekly US data from January 2019 to June 2025. Its central finding is nuanced: stablecoins keep growing, but the returns banks offer on savings accounts slow that expansion.
In concrete terms, stablecoin market capitalization rose about 15% over a typical ten-week period in the sample. A one-basis-point (0.01%) increase in deposit rates, a considerable weekly move for slow-moving savings rates, cut that growth to about 12% in the authors’ baseline estimate.
Methodology: separating causation from coincidence
The central challenge is avoiding a classic error: two series can move together without any causal link. To isolate the effect, the researchers exploited a specific bank behavior. As long as the federal funds rate (the Federal Reserve’s policy benchmark) stays below roughly 3%, lenders barely raise savings rates; above that threshold, they reprice much faster. This asymmetry allowed the team to measure how rate changes affect stablecoin growth while limiting the influence of other factors.
“banks retain some influence over the pace of this adoption through the pricing of deposits”
Iñaki Aldasoro and Rashad Ahmed, authors of the BIS working paper
The table below summarizes the three readings the study provides:
| Scenario | Ten-week growth | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline, no rate change | about 15% | Typical adoption pace |
| One-basis-point rise, baseline estimate | about 12% | Moderate slowdown |
| One-basis-point rise, causal method | about 6% | Sharpest slowdown |
The gap between USDC and USDT is telling. USDC’s closer ties to US users make it more sensitive to the yields banks offer domestically, whereas USDT shows a less US-concentrated usage profile.
Important methodological caveats
The authors stress that working papers reflect their authors’ views, not necessarily those of the BIS. The sample also covers a single high-rate cycle in which stablecoins paid no yield to holders. The results therefore cannot be transposed directly to a world where tokens themselves pay interest, which is precisely the scenario at the heart of the current policy debate.
US regulatory context: yield, reserves and the GENIUS Act
Whether stablecoin holders should earn a return is fiercely debated in Washington. The authors urge regulators to examine two questions: whether issuers can pay yield to holders, and what trade-offs arise from requiring issuers to keep part of their reserves as bank deposits. Both points go to the heart of issuers’ business models and of bank funding.
Banks have lobbied to keep stablecoin rewards out of reach, a fight that weighed on the failed Senate vote on the Clarity Act. Meanwhile, the OCC, the FDIC and the US Treasury are writing implementing rules for the GENIUS Act, which takes effect in January. Signed into law by President Donald Trump in July 2025, the act effectively legalized stablecoins in the United States and set a framework covering issuance, use and custody.
The BIS has tracked stablecoins for years. In 2021 it argued that the rise of blockchain-based digital dollars made central bank digital currencies more urgent, and a 2023 survey warned of financial stability risks if adoption became widespread.
The March 2023 episode shows that fragility. After Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, USDC’s issuer confirmed a $3.3 billion exposure to SVB reserves. Selling pressure on centralized exchanges pushed USDC down about 10%, showing how a shift in holder composition can trigger a run.
The scale is substantial. Dollar-backed stablecoin market capitalization topped $300 billion in October 2025. On-chain gross settlement volume reached $27.6 trillion in 2024, or roughly $6 trillion after adjusting for non-organic activity. B2B payments in supply chains and fund transfers are among the most important drivers of this growth.
Implications for bank deposits: divergent projections
Economists do not agree on how much stablecoins could erode the banking system. Lin William Cong, in a paper backed by Coinbase, Paradigm, PayPal and Stripe, expects adoption to reach about $4 trillion by 2030. In his model calibrated on the US financial system, bank deposits would then fall by $4 trillion, or 19%, with loans dropping by an equivalent 19%, a reduction of $2.7 trillion in credit.
Jessie Jiaxu Wang, an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, published a far more moderate estimate in December 2025: deposit destruction and lower lending of between $65 billion and $1.26 trillion. The upper bound applies only if stablecoin issuers gain access to Fed master accounts.
Such gaps mostly reflect different assumptions about yield, access to central bank infrastructure and bank responses. That is why the question of rewards sits at the centre of the debate.
International responses
In the United Kingdom, the Bank of England proposes that systemic sterling stablecoins hold at least 40% of their backing assets in central bank reserves, guaranteeing at-par redemption. In the euro area, the European Central Bank (ECB) continues work on a digital euro, whose launch could come as early as 2029, subject to legislation. One explicit goal is to prevent private stablecoins from displacing bank deposits as the main means of exchange.
Outlook and scenarios
The BIS study does not point to a halt in stablecoin adoption, but to a measurable slowdown whose size depends on how regulators treat yield. Three scenarios stand out. In the first, stablecoins remain unremunerated and growth stays close to the baseline estimate, with a moderate effect from bank rates. In the second, a framework permitting yield, direct or indirect, accelerates adoption at the expense of deposits. In the third, broader access to Fed accounts or a central bank digital currency would reshape the competitive position of issuers and banks.
For investors, the key signal is how flows respond to monetary policy. While rates stay high and bank savings products remain attractive, stablecoin growth may remain constrained. The GENIUS Act rulemaking timetable and Washington’s stance on yield therefore warrant close attention.
Sources
- Decrypt: Banks Hold a Lever Over Stablecoin Adoption, BIS Economists Say
- Riksbank, Working Paper No. 423: Stablecoins, adoption and fragility
- Yahoo Finance: Banks hold lever over stablecoin adoption
- BPI: Yield-bearing stablecoins can destroy deposits
- BIS: Annual Economic Report 2026, Anchoring trust in money
- CryptoPanic: Banks Hold a Lever Over Stablecoin Adoption, BIS Economists Say
Cet article est publié à titre informatif et éducatif. Il ne constitue en aucun cas un conseil en investissement. Faites vos propres recherches (DYOR) avant toute décision.
