BlockBeats News, May 26th, according to Coindesk data, the total market capitalization of global stablecoins has surpassed $322 billion, reaching a new all-time high. This scale has exceeded the official foreign exchange reserves of emerging economies such as Poland, Thailand, and Mexico, as well as developed economies such as the UK, Canada, and the UAE. Currently, only 14 economies including China, Japan, Russia, India, Taiwan, and Germany hold foreign exchange reserves higher than the total market capitalization of stablecoins.

Stablecoins have become the core pricing and settlement medium for cryptocurrency asset transactions, allowing users to hedge against cryptocurrency price volatility without frequent fiat currency conversions. In decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, stablecoins play a fundamental settlement role; in the field of cross-border payments, leveraging their low-cost and high-efficiency advantages, they provide an alternative solution for cross-border remittances where traditional banking channels have insufficient coverage or high costs. A recent report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has highlighted that since 2022, the scale of stablecoin cross-border transactions has seen significant growth, particularly in regions with high inflation and significant exchange rate fluctuations.

However, the improvement in fund transfer efficiency also comes with potential risks. Stablecoin transactions may exacerbate capital outflow pressures, making emerging markets already facing current account deficits more susceptible to currency depreciation shocks. The BIS research further points out that the increase in stablecoin transaction volume is significantly correlated with subsequent currency devaluation, deviations from covered interest rate parity, and the widening gap between the implicit stablecoin exchange rate in segmented markets and the official exchange rate.

These phenomena suggest that stablecoins may provide a technical channel to evade capital controls, enabling residents of emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) to convert their savings into dollar-denominated assets with low friction, thereby posing a challenge to the effectiveness of sovereign monetary policies.