Stablecoins won’t strengthen global role of euro, ECB’s Lagarde says

ECB President Christine Lagarde said Europe should build tokenized settlement infrastructure anchored by central bank money rather than rely on private stablecoins.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said stablecoins are not an efficient way to strengthen the euro’s international role, pushing back against calls for Europe to respond to US dollar-backed stablecoins with euro-denominated tokens.

Speaking Friday at the Banco de España LatAm Economic Forum in Roda de Bará, Spain, Lagarde made several comments on the role of stablecoins in the European economy. “It is no longer about whether stablecoins should exist, but whether jurisdictions can afford to be without them,” she said, arguing that the case for promoting euro stablecoins becomes less clear once their two core functions are separated.

“The benefits attributed to them [stablecoins] rest on two distinct functions — a monetary function and a technological function — that are systematically conflated in the current debate,” Lagarde said.

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