IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v247y2025ics0165176525000400.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stablecoins, money market funds and monetary policy

Author

Listed:
  • Aldasoro, Iñaki
  • Cornelli, Giulio
  • Ferrari Minesso, Massimo
  • Gambacorta, Leonardo
  • Habib, Maurizio Michael

Abstract

Using a new series of crypto shocks, we document that money market funds’ (MMF) assets under management, and traditional financial market variables more broadly, do not react to crypto shocks, whereas stablecoin market capitalization does. U.S. monetary policy shocks, in contrast, drive developments in both crypto and traditional markets. Crucially, the reaction of MMF assets and stablecoin market capitalization to monetary policy shocks is different: while prime-MMF assets rise after a monetary policy tightening, stablecoin market capitalization declines. In assessing the state of the stablecoin market, the risk-taking environment as dictated by monetary policy is much more consequential than flight-to-quality dynamics observed within stablecoins and MMFs.

Suggested Citation

  • Aldasoro, Iñaki & Cornelli, Giulio & Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Habib, Maurizio Michael, 2025. "Stablecoins, money market funds and monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:247:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525000400
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176525000400
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112203?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Itamar Drechsler & Alexi Savov & Philipp Schnabl, 2017. "The Deposits Channel of Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1819-1876.
    2. Michele Lenza & Giorgio E. Primiceri, 2022. "How to estimate a vector autoregression after March 2020," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(4), pages 688-699, June.
    3. Dario Caldara & Matteo Iacoviello, 2022. "Measuring Geopolitical Risk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(4), pages 1194-1225, April.
    4. Rashad Ahmed & Iñaki Aldasoro & Chanelle Duley, 2024. "Public information and stablecoin runs," BIS Working Papers 1164, Bank for International Settlements.
    5. Marco Cipriani & Gabriele La Spada, 2020. "Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Runs," Staff Reports 956, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    6. Oefele, Nico & Baur, Dirk G. & Smales, Lee A., 2024. "Flight-to-quality—Money market mutual funds and stablecoins during the March 2023 banking crisis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    7. Cornelli, Giulio & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Garratt, Rodney & Reghezza, Alessio, 2024. "Why DeFi lending? Evidence from Aave V2," CEPR Discussion Papers 19358, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Oefele, Nico & Baur, Dirk G. & Smales, Lee A., 2024. "Are stablecoins the money market mutual funds of the future?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    9. Kenechukwu E. Anadu & Pablo D. Azar & Catherine Huang & Marco Cipriani & Thomas M. Eisenbach & Gabriele La Spada & Mattia Landoni & Marco Macchiavelli & Antoine Malfroy-Camine & J. Christina Wang, 2023. "Runs and Flights to Safety: Are Stablecoins the New Money Market Funds?," Staff Reports 1073, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    10. Refet S Gürkaynak & Brian Sack & Eric Swanson, 2005. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Response of Asset Prices to Monetary Policy Actions and Statements," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    11. Lyons, Richard K. & Viswanath-Natraj, Ganesh, 2023. "What keeps stablecoins stable?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    12. Kaiji Chen & Jue Ren & Tao Zha, 2018. "The Nexus of Monetary Policy and Shadow Banking in China," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3891-3936, December.
    13. Aldasoro, Iñaki & Cornelli, Giulio & Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Habib, Maurizio Michael, 2025. "Stablecoins, money market funds and monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    14. Iñaki Aldasoro & Perry Mehrling & Daniel H. Neilson, . "On par: a money view of stablecoins," Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures.
    15. Kairong Xiao & Francesca Cornelli, 2020. "Monetary Transmission through Shadow Banks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(6), pages 2379-2420.
    16. Bertsch, Christoph, 2023. "Stablecoins: Adoption and Fragility," Working Paper Series 423, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    17. Iñaki Aldasoro & Sebastian Doerr, 2023. "Who borrows from money market funds?," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    18. Karau, Sören, 2023. "Monetary policy and Bitcoin," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    19. Gara Afonso & Catherine Huang & Marco Cipriani & Abduelwahab Hussein & Gabriele La Spada, 2023. "Monetary Policy Transmission and the Size of the Money Market Fund Industry: An Update," Liberty Street Economics 20230403, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    20. 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.
    21. Iacoviello, Matteo & Navarro, Gaston, 2019. "Foreign effects of higher U.S. interest rates," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 232-250.
    22. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    23. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    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. Aldasoro, Iñaki & Cornelli, Giulio & Ferrari Minesso, Massimo & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Habib, Maurizio Michael, 2025. "Stablecoins, money market funds and monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 247(C).
    2. Iñaki Aldasoro & Matteo Aquilina & Ulf Lewrick & Sang Hyuk Lim, 2025. "Stablecoin growth - policy challenges and approaches," BIS Bulletins 108, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Rashad Ahmed & Iñaki Aldasoro, 2025. "Stablecoins and safe asset prices," BIS Working Papers 1270, Bank for International Settlements.
    4. Samuel Kaplan & Efstathios Polyzos & David Tercero-Lucas, 2025. "Crypto Listens: Asymmetric Reactions to Text-based Signals in Central Bank Communications," Working Papers 365, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).

    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. Oefele, Nico & Baur, Dirk G. & Smales, Lee A., 2024. "Are stablecoins the money market mutual funds of the future?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. Rashad Ahmed & Iñaki Aldasoro, 2025. "Stablecoins and safe asset prices," BIS Working Papers 1270, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Massimo Ferrari Minesso & Frederik Kurcz & Maria Sole Pagliari, 2022. "Do words hurt more than actions? The impact of trade tensions on financial markets," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(6), pages 1138-1159, September.
    4. Elliott, David & Meisenzahl, Ralf R. & Peydró, José-Luis, 2024. "Nonbank lenders as global shock absorbers: Evidence from US monetary policy spillovers," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Cafiso, Gianluca & Rivolta, Giulia, 2024. "Conventional monetary interventions through the credit channel and the rise of non-bank institutions," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 48(1).
    6. Iñaki Aldasoro & Sebastian Doerr & Haonan Zhou, 2023. "Non-bank lending during crises," BIS Working Papers 1074, Bank for International Settlements.
    7. Hasan, Iftekhar & Li, Xiang & Takalo, Tuomas, 2023. "Technological innovation and the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission," IWH Discussion Papers 14/2021, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2023.
    8. Thomas Despois & Catherine Doz, 2023. "Identifying and interpreting the factors in factor models via sparsity: Different approaches," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 533-555, June.
    9. Coman, Andra & Lloyd, Simon P., 2022. "In the face of spillovers: Prudential policies in emerging economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    10. Hansen, Stephen & McMahon, Michael & Tong, Matthew, 2019. "The long-run information effect of central bank communication," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 185-202.
    11. Maximilian Grimm, 2024. "The Effect of Monetary Policy on Systemic Bank Funding Stability," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 341, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    12. Kaufmann, Christoph & Leyva, Jaime & Storz, Manuela, 2024. "Insurance corporations’ balance sheets, financial stability and monetary policy," Working Paper Series 2892, European Central Bank.
    13. Brian Zhu, 2024. "Stablecoin Runs and Disclosure Policy in the Presence of Large Sales," Papers 2408.07227, arXiv.org.
    14. Hasan, Iftekhar & Kwak, Boreum & Li, Xiang, 2024. "Financial technologies and the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    15. Dias, Daniel A. & Duarte, João B., 2015. "Monetary Policy and Homeownership: Empirical Evidence, Theory, and Policy Implications," MPRA Paper 112252, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Mar 2021.
    16. Dominic Cucic & Denis Gorea, 2024. "Non-bank lending and the transmission of monetary policy," BIS Working Papers 1211, Bank for International Settlements.
    17. Bats, Joost V. & Giuliodori, Massimo & Houben, Aerdt C.F.J., 2023. "Monetary policy effects in times of negative interest rates: What do bank stock prices tell us?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    18. Wenting Liao & Jun Ma & Chengsi Zhang, 2023. "Identifying exchange rate effects and spillovers of US monetary policy shocks in the presence of time‐varying instrument relevance," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(7), pages 989-1006, November.
    19. Damast, Dominik & Kubitza, Christian & Sørensen, Jakob Ahm, 2025. "Homeowners insurance and the transmission of monetary policy," ICIR Working Paper Series 55/25, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    20. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné, 2022. "Backcasting world trade growth using data reduction methods," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(10), pages 3169-3191, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General

    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:eee:ecolet:v:247:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525000400. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.