BIS Weighs Stablecoins Against Tokenised Deposits at Jackson Hole

A Bank for International Settlements (BIS) senior official opened a panel at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium with a structured assessment of stablecoins and tokenised deposits, framing the debate around two foundational monetary properties: a common unit of account and the singleness of money, under which all instruments denominated in that unit are redeemable at par into central bank money with finality. The speech also identified liquidity elasticity and interoperability as essential supporting conditions, arguing that any technological innovation must reinforce rather than erode these foundations.

The official drew a pointed contrast between stablecoins and tokenised deposits by illustrating how singleness breaks down in practice: a holder of USDT (Tether) wishing to pay a counterparty who only accepts USDC (Circle) must sell in a secondary market where deviations from par are routine, introducing friction and risk that the current two-tier banking system is specifically designed to eliminate. Tokenised deposits, by operating within the supervised intermediary structure anchored by central bank money, preserve that par-redemption guarantee in a way stablecoins currently do not.

The speech acknowledged that the existing two-tier system carries its own frictions, notably patchy interoperability across intermediaries and platforms, constrained competition, and inefficient cross-border payments, and that distributed ledger technology (DLT) and tokenisation offer genuine tools to address them. The argument presented was not that stablecoins have no role, but that a system built primarily on tokenised deposits appears more capable of maintaining monetary integrity, while a coexistence model would require careful design to remain safe and efficient.

Wyoming’s move to issue a public stablecoin, the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT), was noted as relevant context for how public-sector actors are themselves exploring the frontier, lending the Jackson Hole setting additional symbolic weight. The speech stopped short of prescribing a specific regulatory or architectural outcome, positioning itself instead as a framing contribution to an ongoing policy debate.