IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/97050.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Runs and Flights to Safety: Are Stablecoins the New Money Market Funds?

Author

Abstract

Stablecoins and money market funds both seek to provide investors with safe, money-like assets but are vulnerable to runs in times of stress. In this paper, we investigate similarities and differences between the two, comparing investor behavior during the stablecoin runs of 2022 and 2023 to investor behavior during the money market fund runs of 2008 and 2020. We document that, similarly to money market fund investors, stablecoin investors engage in flight to safety, with net flows from riskier to safer stablecoins during run periods. However, whereas in money market funds, run risk has historically materialized only in prime funds, with stablecoins, runs occurred in different stablecoin types across the 2022 and 2023 episodes. We also show that, similar to intrafamily flows in money market funds, stablecoin flows tend to be within blockchains. Finally, for stablecoins, we estimate a discrete “break-the-buck” threshold of $0.99, below which redemptions accelerate.

Suggested Citation

  • 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?," Working Papers 23-11, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:97050
    DOI: 10.29412/res.wp.2023.11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2023/runs-and-flights-to-safety-are-stablecoins-the-new-money-market-funds
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/2023/wp2311.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.29412/res.wp.2023.11?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emily A Gallagher & Lawrence D W Schmidt & Allan Timmermann & Russ Wermers, 2020. "Investor Information Acquisition and Money Market Fund Risk Rebalancing during the 2011–2012 Eurozone Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(4), pages 1445-1483.
    2. Marco Cipriani & Gabriele La Spada, 2020. "Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Runs," Staff Reports 956, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Antoine Bouveret & Antoine Martin & Patrick E. McCabe, 2022. "Money Market Fund Vulnerabilities: A Global Perspective," Staff Reports 1009, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    4. Emily A Gallagher & Lawrence D W Schmidt & Allan Timmermann & Russ Wermers, 2020. "Investor Information Acquisition and Money Market Fund Risk Rebalancing during the 2011–2012 Eurozone Crisis," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1445-1483.
    5. Victoria Ivashina & David S. Scharfstein & Jeremy C. Stein, 2015. "Dollar Funding and the Lending Behavior of Global Banks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(3), pages 1241-1281.
    6. Burcu Duygan-Bump & Patrick Parkinson & Eric Rosengren & Gustavo A. Suarez & Paul Willen, 2013. "How Effective Were the Federal Reserve Emergency Liquidity Facilities? Evidence from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(2), pages 715-737, April.
    7. Cipriani, Marco & La Spada, Gabriele, 2021. "Investors’ appetite for money-like assets: The MMF industry after the 2014 regulatory reform," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 250-269.
    8. Lei Li & Yi Li & Marco Macchiavelli & Xing (Alex) Zhou, 2021. "Liquidity Restrictions, Runs, and Central Bank Interventions: Evidence from Money Market Funds [Dealer financial conditions and lender-of-last-resort facilities]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5402-5437.
    9. Marcin Kacperczyk & Philipp Schnabl, 2013. "How Safe Are Money Market Funds?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 1073-1122.
    10. Sergey Chernenko & Adi Sunderam, 2014. "Frictions in Shadow Banking: Evidence from the Lending Behavior of Money Market Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(6), pages 1717-1750.
    11. Patrick E. McCabe, 2010. "The cross section of money market fund risks and financial crises," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2010-51, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Li, Yi, 2021. "Reciprocal lending relationships in shadow banking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 600-619.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2021_002 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Lugo, Stefano, 2023. "Cost of monitoring and risk taking in the money market funds industry," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    4. Järvenpää, Maija & Paavola, Aleksi, 2021. "Investor monitoring, money-likeness and stability of money market funds," Research Discussion Papers 2/2021, Bank of Finland.
    5. Alyssa G. Anderson & Wenxin Du & Bernd Schlusche, 2021. "Arbitrage Capital of Global Banks," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-032, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Xiaole Tong & Jingfei Wang, 2023. "Does the Development of Money Market Funds in China Increase the Bank Liquidity Risk?," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7.
    7. Fricke, Daniel & Greppmair, Stefan & Paludkiewicz, Karol, 2022. "You can't always get what you want (where you want it): Cross-border effects of the US money market fund reform," Discussion Papers 03/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    8. Di Maggio, Marco & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2017. "The unintended consequences of the zero lower bound policy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 59-80.
    9. Kim, Hugh Hoikwang, 2020. "Information spillover of bailouts," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    10. Capotă, Laura-Dona & Grill, Michael & Molestina Vivar, Luis & Schmitz, Niklas & Weistroffer, Christian, 2022. "Is the EU money market fund regulation fit for purpose? Lessons from the COVID-19 turmoil," Working Paper Series 2737, European Central Bank.
    11. Timmermann, Allan & Schmidt, Lawrence & , & Wermers, Russ, 2017. "Transparency, Investor Information Acquisition, and Money Market Fund Risk Rebalancing during the 2011-12 Eurozone Crisis," CEPR Discussion Papers 11895, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Dunne, Peter G. & Giuliana, Raffaele, 2021. "Do liquidity limits amplify money market fund redemptions during the COVID crisis?," ESRB Working Paper Series 127, European Systemic Risk Board.
    13. Kenechukwu E. Anadu & Marco Cipriani & Ryan M. Craver & Gabriele La Spada, 2021. "COVID Response: The Money Market Mutual Fund Facility," Staff Reports 980, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    14. Järvenpää, Maija & Paavola, Aleksi, 2021. "Investor monitoring, money-likeness and stability of money market funds," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 2/2021, Bank of Finland.
    15. Correa, Ricardo & Sapriza, Horacio & Zlate, Andrei, 2021. "Wholesale funding runs, global banks' supply of liquidity insurance, and corporate investment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    16. Antoine Bouveret & Antoine Martin & Patrick E. McCabe, 2022. "Money Market Fund Vulnerabilities: A Global Perspective," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2022-012, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Emily Gallagher & Sean Collins, 2016. "Money Market Funds and the Prospect of a US Treasury Default," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(01), pages 1-44, March.
    18. Allen, Kyle & Saha, Pritam & Whitledge, Matthew & Winters, Drew, 2023. "Money market reforms:The effect on the commercial paper market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    19. Aldasoro, Iñaki & Balke, Florian & Barth, Andreas & Eren, Egemen, 2022. "Spillovers of funding dry-ups," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    20. Balke, Florian & Aldasoro, Inaki & Barth, Andreas & Eren, Egemen, 2019. "Bank Competition for Wholesale Funding: Evidence from Corporate Deposits," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203578, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    21. La Spada, Gabriele, 2018. "Competition, reach for yield, and money market funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 87-110.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    stablecoins; money market mutual funds; financial stability; crypto assets; runs; liquidity transformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:fip:fedbwp:97050. 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 Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.