Federal Reserve Board's Waller highlights stablecoins and tokenized assets in remarks on the dollar's international role

In welcoming remarks at the Fifth Conference on the International Roles of the Dollar, Federal Reserve Board Governor Christopher J. Waller said the event will focus on how financial innovation, particularly stablecoins, is affecting the U.S. dollar's role in the global financial system. He said the traditional foundations of the dollar's international position remain important, but distributed ledger technologies and tokenized assets are creating new channels for global dollar intermediation alongside traditional banking and payment systems. Waller described the conference agenda as centered on how stablecoins and blockchain-based infrastructure are changing payments and foreign exchange markets, including through rapid growth in stablecoin transactions, decentralized foreign exchange trading and alternative cross-border payment rails. He also pointed to research on spillovers from stablecoin adoption into exchange rates, dollar funding conditions, covered interest parity deviations and cross-border capital movements, as well as the link between dollar-backed stablecoins and demand for U.S. safe assets such as Treasuries. A further theme is whether stablecoins could strengthen the dollar's global role by broadening access to dollar-denominated instruments or instead create new tensions in international monetary and financial intermediation. The remarks were framed as an introduction to the two-day conference and did not announce new policy measures.