This Italian Banker Thinks the Euro is in Trouble—And It Involves Crypto Coins!

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What’s Cooking in the Crypto Cauldron? 🍲💸

  • Lorenzo Bini Smaghi—imagine a man in an exceptionally crisp suit, former bigwig at the European Central Bank—shook his finger at Europe, warning that the euro is practically invisible in the $255 billion stablecoin sweetshop.
  • His master plan? The ECB should stop sipping espresso, roll up its sleeves, and whip up some euro stablecoins, pronto! Oh, and set some ‘grown-up’ rules so things don’t turn into a digital food fight.
  • If they don’t? He says Europe can reserve a table at the “left-out” club—the velvet-rope area of global finance where no one gets invited to the cool parties.

Stablecoins—picture them as magical tokens that don’t get seasick when the crypto market goes whoosh—are ballooning faster than a birthday clown’s best effort. Nearly all the power is in the hands (wallets?) of American dollar-backed coins—$241 billion worth! The euro? It’s peeking through the window, clutching a croissant, wondering what happened.

Bini Smaghi—as usual gliding through the Financial Times with a fountain pen and an arched eyebrow—pointed out that Europe’s big new crypto law, MiCA, makes anyone issuing a stablecoin back them up with cold hard cash or the dullest government bonds imaginable. (Yes, that type of fun!)

The EU even has a practice playground for blockchains. Yet banks and officials seem to eye stablecoins the way a grandmother eyes a skateboard ramp. The result: barely a whiff of euro in the stablecoin air. 🇪🇺

To be slightly fair, Société Générale (that’s French for “Let’s try”) did release a euro-stablecoin in 2023, and just dropped a dollar one too. Très chic.

But Bini Smaghi’s jaw drops at the idea that if Europeans start using dollar coins for everyday stuff—and let’s be real, who wouldn’t want to pay for pizza with magic internet money?—funds might escape from euro banks and flood into U.S. cryptoland. Big trouble for the euro’s pride! 😱

That would make the ECB as useful as a chocolate teapot when it comes to managing rates or market panic. Bini Smaghi’s solution: regulators should jump into the pool, not stand on the edge clutching their towels.

So, he said, if the ECB sponsors some shiny new euro-coins and gets everyone playing by the same rules, Europe might just zip ahead in the payments race and stitch its capital markets together. If not—well, they’ll have plenty of time to practice their marginalization faces. 😏

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2025-07-05 18:54