Stablecoins as a channel of monetary policy
Stablecoins and monetary policy transmission are both among the fastest-growing keywords, but the papers that join them sit only in finance journals. Now that issuers hold large amounts of Treasury bills, does policy pass through stablecoins into crypto credit, and do stablecoin flows move bill yields?
What prompted this
On the trends page, "stablecoins" is among the ten keywords that grew most across all journals: 22 papers in July–September 2026, against about 8 expected from its earlier share. "Monetary policy transmission" grew as well (39 against 24). Since October 2025, 51 papers in the archive carry a stablecoin keyword (42 in finance journals, 9 in economics). Nine of them also carry a monetary-policy, interest-rate or Treasury keyword, and all nine are in finance journals.
Questions
- When policy rates move, do stablecoin issuance and on-chain lending rates follow, the way deposits and loan rates do at banks?
- In the other direction, do large stablecoin inflows push down short-term Treasury bill yields?
- Does the pass-through differ between issuers with audited reserves and the rest, and has new stablecoin regulation changed it?
Data that could help
- Daily supply by issuer from on-chain records and market data (the cryptocurrency category of the dataset ranking), plus issuers' reserve reports.
- Monetary policy surprises around central-bank announcements, and Treasury bill yields.
- A vector autoregression or local projections around the surprises (see the equation ranking).
Next step
Read the nine finance papers that combine both topics and note which direction of transmission each one tests.