No Foreign Interest in Stablecoins

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Qiao Wang - March 14, 2019

USD-backed stablecoins have existed for nearly five years.

The first Tether was issued on October 6th, 2014, and served as a reliable (if wild west) digital dollar for global exchanges for several years. More recently, numerous organizations have issued their own USD-backed and regulated stablecoins, such as Coinbase, Gemini, and Paxos.

But have you wondered why there aren’t any prominent EUR-backed or JPY-backed stablecoins yet?

An obvious answer may be that USD is the most important fiat currency in the world, and the leading crypto reserve asset.

But I suspect another major reason may be that the short-term interest rate set by the European Central Bank is 0%, and the Bank of Japan is actually negative!