📍 IMF Fud stablecoin: Warning of a new macro risk emerging

📌The biggest story of this season is not $BTC or any altcoin, but rather the least noticed thing: Stablecoin.
In 2025, for the first time in history, stablecoins have surpassed #Bitcoin và #Ethereum in cross-border capital flows. The IMF considers this a new variable in the international financial system—something that will "cause trouble" in the future.

📌Stablecoins have truly become an international payment channel worth trillions of USD
- In 2024, the total stablecoin transaction value reached about $32 trillion, with $5.7 trillion being "cross-border-like" transactions.
- International stablecoin flows reached ~ $2 trillion, with regional allocation:
+ North America: $633B
+ Asia-Pacific: $519B
+ Africa-Middle East: 6.7% of regional GDP
+ Latin America - Caribbean: 7.7% of regional GDP

👉 In emerging markets (EM), stablecoins are being used to replace traditional bank capital flows and bonds (which EMs are restricted from).

📌Supply scale: From $5 billion to $300 billion (an increase of 11,900%) in just 5 years.
Of which USDT accounts for $185B, USDC makes up $75B. Only 2 coins control >90% of the market share, turning the stablecoin market into a dual structure.

👉 Only the top 2 companies have swallowed up the entire global stablecoin pie—no single agency or organization can manage it. (The EU’s MiCa has tried to eliminate the dominance of $USDT in the region but also failed).

📌 Macro risk: Stablecoins undermine national monetary policy when:
- Tech-enabled Dollarization
- In countries with inflation, people convert local currency to USDT much faster than buying physical USD
- Stablecoin transactions account for more than 7% of GDP in some regions.

👉 Monetary policy is distorted by private entities "too big to fall." Central banks may lose control over exchange rates, interest rates, and liquidity when everything is no longer traded in fiat. Not to mention the risks of money laundering or criminals using stablecoins.

📌 Is there a risk of a digital bank run?
If users rush to exchange USDT for physical USD, issuers must liquidate reserve assets (mainly T-bills).
-> This would cause a liquidity shock to the US bond market, the backbone of the global financial system. And clearly this risk is outside the system, so even the Fed will have trouble intervening.

📌The truth is the amount of T-bills Tether holds accounts for more than 1% of the total outstanding T-bills, equivalent to a mid-sized country, serving even the US Treasury. Tether is an underrated monster.
Currently, Tether is looking to raise more $20B with ambitions to value $500B (at a scale equivalent to the world's largest banks).

👉 Overall, Tether is playing the role of a small central bank, but without matching regulatory standards. That’s why the IMF is sounding the alarm. It makes sense, as the more popular stablecoins become, the more irrelevant the IMF becomes. When will small countries start borrowing from Tether instead of the IMF?