The world is talking increasingly about de-dollarisation. Central banks are accumulating gold, China is promoting the yuan and the BRICS are seeking alternatives to a monetary system dominated by the United States. Can stablecoins save the dollar’s hegemony?

But while this transformation is moving forward, another revolution is growing almost in the opposite direction. Stablecoins, one of the fastest-growing instruments within the digital economy, are overwhelmingly denominated in dollars. The paradox is clear: if the world wants to depend less on the dollar, why is it digitalising precisely the dollar?

Dollars that do not look like dollars

A stablecoin is, to put it very simply, a digital representation of a traditional currency. USDT, from Tether, or USDC, from Circle, make it possible to hold a kind of digital dollar that circulates through blockchain networks. They are not banknotes issued by the Federal Reserve or conventional bank deposits, but private assets that seek to maintain a stable equivalence with the dollar thanks to reserves that back them.

During the early years of the sector’s development, these assets became closely associated with the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies. But this interpretation is beginning to fall short. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the global stablecoin market stood at around $315 billion at the beginning of April 2026. It is still a modest amount compared with the global financial system as a whole, but one figure is particularly significant: approximately 98% of the value of stablecoins is denominated in dollars.

This means that a technology born, to a large extent, with the promise of building an alternative financial system is helping to digitally reproduce the dominance of the US currency. And it does so with an advantage that the traditional dollar has never had: the ability to circulate globally over the Internet without the need to transport cash or necessarily open a bank account in the United States.

The new dollarisation arrives via the Internet

This change may seem relatively insignificant from Europe, where access to the euro or the dollar is relatively straightforward. The perspective changes in economies with high inflation, capital controls or currencies that rapidly lose value. In these countries, gaining access to a digital asset linked to the dollar can become a way of protecting savings or making international payments.

This is precisely why the BIS warns of the risk of “digital dollarisation”. Widespread adoption of stablecoins denominated in foreign currency could reduce the use of local currencies and, consequently, limit the ability of central banks to manage their own monetary policy. Washington would not need to impose the dollar. In certain economies, citizens themselves could voluntarily adopt it in response to the weakness of their currency.

This is where the major difference from traditional dollarisation lies. For decades, the international expansion of the dollar has required correspondent banks, financial markets, cash and a complex payment infrastructure. Stablecoins can simplify part of this process and turn a digital wallet into a new gateway to the dollar system. This possibility has not gone unnoticed in Washington.

The United States makes its move

In July 2025, the United States passed the GENIUS Act, which establishes a federal framework for payment stablecoins. The Treasury Department continues to develop its regulation, while the US administration presents these assets not only as a financial innovation, but also as a strategic opportunity.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has explicitly argued that stablecoins can expand international access to the dollar, strengthen its role as a reserve currency and, at the same time, increase demand for US government debt. The relationship between these two elements is important for understanding why Washington has moved from viewing the phenomenon with suspicion to trying to integrate it into its financial system.

Major stablecoin issuers need liquid assets to support the promise that one digital unit will continue to be worth one dollar. These assets include US Treasury bills. According to data from the Treasury Department itself, Tether and Circle had increased their holdings of Treasury bills by around $70 billion since 2022.

The mechanism is simple: demand for stablecoins grows, issuers need more reserves and part of this money ends up invested in US government debt. In this way, a private instrument created on blockchain networks can ultimately strengthen two fundamental pillars of US financial power: the international use of the dollar and the US government debt market.

A paradox amid de-dollarisation

All of this is happening while the dollar’s share of central banks’ official reserves is slowly declining. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, the dollar accounted for 56.7% of global foreign exchange reserves during the second quarter of 2026. It remains, by a considerable margin, the leading international reserve currency, but its share has been declining compared with previous decades.

This is where the picture becomes more complex. If we only look at central bank reserves, we can conclude that the world is gradually moving towards less dependence on the dollar. But if we look at what is happening in the new digital infrastructures, we discover a different movement: while some states are trying to diversify, part of the digital economy continues to choose the dollar as its unit of reference.

This is no minor contradiction. It means that de-dollarisation is not necessarily progressing uniformly. The dollar can lose ground in one part of the system and gain it in another. In fact, the Federal Reserve itself has analysed how stablecoins can expand global access to dollar-denominated financing and help preserve its international use.

Europe is watching this development with concern. The European Central Bank has warned that the expansion of dollar-denominated stablecoins could increase Europe’s dependence on external financial infrastructures. It is no coincidence that, in parallel, the European Union is accelerating the digital euro project and calling for greater autonomy in payment systems.

When money changes form

For much of the 20th century, the dollar’s hegemony was built on Bretton Woods, oil, Wall Street, the US government debt market and an extensive international banking network. Now, digitalisation could add a new layer to this architecture. This does not mean that stablecoins have their future guaranteed or that they are equivalent to traditional bank money. The BIS continues to warn about liquidity risks, possible mass runs and the problems that widespread adoption could create for financial stability.

But the geopolitical issue goes beyond whether USDT or USDC will continue to dominate this market. What is at stake is whether the dollar will be able to adapt to an economy in which money will increasingly circulate through new digital infrastructures. And this forces us to reconsider an idea that seemed obvious. Perhaps it is not enough to look at how many dollars central banks hold to determine whether US hegemony is weakening. We must also look at the currency in which the new financial circuits are being built.

De-dollarisation exists. But so does a powerful digitalisation of the dollar. One trend is eroding part of the old monetary order while the other may be helping it adapt to the new one. That is why, after observing the rise of stablecoins, an even more important question remains open: is the dollar really losing its power or is it simply learning to exercise it in a different way?

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