IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bfr/banfra/908.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stablecoins and the Financing of the Real Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Jean Barthélémy
  • Paul Gardin
  • Benoit Nguyen

Abstract

Stablecoins are crypto-assets that aim to maintain a stable value relative to a fiat currency. This paper documents one implication of their massive growth since 2020 for the financing of the real economy. The largest stablecoins manage their peg with the US dollar by holding short-term safe assets. We identify changes in the stablecoin demand for US dollardenominated commercial papers (CP) by exploiting cross-sectional and time-varying heterogeneity in the main tablecoins’ reserve assets policy. We show that CP issuers catered to the additional demand from stablecoins by issuing more, illustrating the implications of stablecoins for financial stability and the financing of the real economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean Barthélémy & Paul Gardin & Benoit Nguyen, 2023. "Stablecoins and the Financing of the Real Economy," Working papers 908, Banque de France.
    • Handle: RePEc:bfr:banfra:908
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://publications.banque-france.fr/sites/default/files/medias/documents/wp908_1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2012. "The Aggregate Demand for Treasury Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(2), pages 233-267.
    2. Marcin Kacperczyk & Christophe Pérignon & Guillaume Vuillemey, 2021. "The Private Production of Safe Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 495-535, April.
    3. Dimitri Vayanos & Jean‐Luc Vila, 2021. "A Preferred‐Habitat Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(1), pages 77-112, January.
    4. Robin Greenwood & Samuel G. Hanson & Jeremy C. Stein, 2015. "A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(4), pages 1683-1722, August.
    5. Egemen Eren & Andreas Schrimpf & Vladyslav Sushko, 2020. "US dollar funding markets during the Covid-19 crisis - the money market fund turmoil," BIS Bulletins 14, Bank for International Settlements.
    6. Jeremy C. Stein, 2012. "Monetary Policy as Financial Stability Regulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 57-95.
    7. Òscar Jordà, 2005. "Estimation and Inference of Impulse Responses by Local Projections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 161-182, March.
    8. Bengt Holmström & Jean Tirole, 2001. "LAPM: A Liquidity‐Based Asset Pricing Model," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(5), pages 1837-1867, October.
    9. Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar, 2022. "Cryptocurrencies and Decentralized Finance (DeFi)," NBER Working Papers 30006, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Saggu, Aman, 2022. "The Intraday Bitcoin Response to Tether Minting and Burning Events: Asymmetry, Investor Sentiment, and “Whale Alerts” on Twitter," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    11. Cong, Lin William & Mayer, Simon, 2022. "The Coming Battle of Digital Currencies," Applied Economics and Policy Working Paper Series 320020, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    12. Mark Carlson & Burcu Duygan-Bump & Fabio Natalucci & Bill Nelson & Marcelo Ochoa & Jeremy Stein & Skander Van den Heuvel, 2016. "The Demand for Short-Term, Safe Assets and Financial Stability: Some Evidence and Implications for Central Bank Policies," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 12(4), pages 307-333, December.
    13. Koijen, Ralph S.J. & Koulischer, François & Nguyen, Benoît & Yogo, Motohiro, 2021. "Inspecting the mechanism of quantitative easing in the euro area," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 1-20.
    14. Rashad Ahmed & Alessandro Rebucci, 2022. "Dollar Reserves and U.S. Yields: Identifying the Price Impact of Official Flows," NBER Working Papers 30476, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Austin Adams & Markus F. Ibert, 2022. "Runs on Algorithmic Stablecoins: Evidence from Iron, Titan, and Steel," FEDS Notes 2022-06-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Egemen Eren & Andreas Schrimpf & Vladyslav Sushko, 2020. "US dollar funding markets during the Covid-19 crisis - the international dimension," BIS Bulletins 15, Bank for International Settlements.
    17. Uhlig, Harald, 2022. "A Luna-tic Stablecoin Crash," CEPR Discussion Papers 17465, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Robin Greenwood & Dimitri Vayanos, 2010. "Price Pressure in the Government Bond Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 585-590, May.
    19. Douglas Arner & Raphael Auer & Jon Frost, 2020. "Stablecoins: risks, potential and regulation," Revista de Estabilidad Financiera, Banco de España, issue Autumn.
    20. Douglas Arner & Raphael Auer & Jon Frost, 2020. "Stablecoins: potential, risks and regulation," BIS Working Papers 905, Bank for International Settlements.
    21. Nina Boyarchenko & Richard K. Crump & Anna Kovner & Deborah Leonard, 2021. "COVID Response: The Commercial Paper Funding Facility," Staff Reports 982, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    22. Ye Li & Simon Mayer & Simon Mayer, 2021. "Money Creation in Decentralized Finance: A Dynamic Model of Stablecoin and Crypto Shadow Banking," CESifo Working Paper Series 9260, CESifo.
    23. Jon Frost & Hyun Song Shin & Peter Wierts, 2020. "An early stablecoin? The Bank of Amsterdam and the governance of money," Working Papers 696, DNB.
    24. Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar, 2021. "Blockchain Analysis of the Bitcoin Market," NBER Working Papers 29396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Richard K. Lyons & Ganesh Viswanath-Natraj, 2020. "What Keeps Stablecoins Stable?," NBER Working Papers 27136, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Rod Garratt & Michael Junho Lee & Antoine Martin & Joseph Torregrossa, 2022. "The Future of Payments Is Not Stablecoins," Liberty Street Economics 20220207, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    27. Stefan Gissler & Marco Macchiavelli & Borghan Narajabad, 2020. "Private Supply of Safe Assets: Shadow Banks versus Traditional Banks," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 477-481, May.
    28. Adi Sunderam, 2015. "Money Creation and the Shadow Banking System," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(4), pages 939-977.
    29. Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar, 2022. "Cryptocurrencies and Decentralised Finance," BIS Working Papers 1061, Bank for International Settlements.
    30. John Caramichael & Gordon Y. Liao, 2022. "Stablecoins: Growth Potential and Impact on Banking," International Finance Discussion Papers 1334, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wu, Gabriel Shui Tang & Leung, Pak Ho, 2023. "Do asset-backed stablecoins spread crypto volatility to traditional financial assets? Evidence from Tether," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gregory Phelan, 2022. "Fragility of Safe Asset Markets," Staff Reports 1026, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Marcin Kacperczyk & Christophe Pérignon & Guillaume Vuillemey, 2021. "The Private Production of Safe Assets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 495-535, April.
    3. Jappelli, Ruggero & Pelizzon, Loriana & Subrahmanyam, Marti G., 2023. "Quantitative easing, the repo market, and the term structure of interest rates," SAFE Working Paper Series 395, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    4. Benedikt Ballensiefen & Angelo Ranaldo, 2023. "Safe Asset Carry Trade," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(2), pages 223-265.
    5. Golec, Pascal & Perotti, Enrico, 2017. "Safe assets: a review," Working Paper Series 2035, European Central Bank.
    6. Efraim Benmelech & Nittai Bergman, 2018. "Debt, Information, and Illiquidity," NBER Working Papers 25054, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jason Allen & Jakub Kastl & Milena Wittwer, 2020. "Maturity Composition and the Demand for Government Debt," Staff Working Papers 20-29, Bank of Canada.
    8. Sebastian Infante & Kyungmin Kim & Anna Orlik & André F. Silva & Robert J. Tetlow, 2023. "Retail Central Bank Digital Currencies: Implications for Banking and Financial Stability," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-072, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Lugo, Stefano, 2021. "Short-term debt catering," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    10. Corradin, Stefano & Schwaab, Bernd, 2023. "Euro area sovereign bond risk premia before and during the Covid-19 pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    11. Tatiana A. Gorbacheva, 2022. "Stablecoins As a New Word in the Cryptocurrency Market," Finansovyj žhurnal — Financial Journal, Financial Research Institute, Moscow 125375, Russia, issue 1, pages 126-139, February.
    12. Gita Gopinath & Jeremy C Stein, 2021. "Banking, Trade, and the Making of a Dominant Currency," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 783-830.
    13. Dottori, Davide & Manna, Michele, 2016. "Strategy and tactics in public debt management," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 1-25.
    14. Sebastian Infante & Kyungmin Kim & Anna Orlik & André F. Silva & Robert J. Tetlow, 2022. "The Macroeconomic Implications of CBDC: A Review of the Literature," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-076, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Infante, Sebastian, 2020. "Private money creation with safe assets and term premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 828-856.
    16. Chase P. Ross, 2022. "The Collateral Premium and Levered Safe-Asset Production," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-046, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Giese, Julia & Joyce, Michael & Meaning, Jack & Worlidge, Jack, 2021. "Preferred habitat investors in the UK government bond market," Bank of England working papers 939, Bank of England.
    18. Jackson, Timothy & Pennacchi, George, 2021. "How should governments create liquidity?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 281-295.
    19. Challe, Edouard & Le Grand, François & Ragot, Xavier, 2013. "Incomplete markets, liquidation risk, and the term structure of interest rates," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2483-2519.
    20. Michael Woodford, 2016. "Quantitative easing and financial stability," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 19(2), pages 04-77, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crypto-Assets; Stablecoins; Financial Markets; Safe Assets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G29 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bfr:banfra:908. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael brassart (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdfgvfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.