Stablecoins in tokenized economy

written by Paolo Battiston - Scientific Director at Excellence Global Payment Insights

Stablecoins are emerging as a significant component of the digital payments ecosystem, occupying the intersection of payment infrastructure, liquidity management, and distributed ledger technologies. While they currently represent a limited share of real economy flows, their growth in terms of capitalization, on-chain volumes, and experimental use cases has sparked a strategic debate on the potential impacts for banks, payment players, and monetary sovereignty.

This paper analyzes the stablecoin phenomenon with a structured and non-ideological approach, drawing on public sources, international reports, and contributions from Italian and international experts. The analysis highlights how, currently, stablecoins operate primarily as a complementary infrastructure to existing payment systems, with adoption concentrated in corporate treasury management applications and B2B payments in highly inefficient corridors. Consistently, the European central banks' perspective focuses on user protection and financial stability, rather than on an immediate risk to the euro's monetary sovereignty.

At the same time, the paper shows how the distinctive characteristics of stablecoins—24/7 availability, near-instant settlement, programmability of value, and native integration with digital infrastructures—can, over time, impact the distribution of value and roles along the payment chain. Starting from this evidence, the report develops a scenario-based approach, exploring alternative evolutionary trajectories ranging from regulated coexistence to more selective forms of on-chain liquidity concentration.

The paper's central contribution is to offer banking top management and institutional decision-makers a framework for navigating a highly uncertain environment, shifting focus from a defensive approach to strategic reflection on available options. In an increasingly digitalized and tokenized payments economy, preparing for multiple scenarios and building flexible capabilities emerges as a necessary condition for preserving and renewing banks' role in value creation.