Name: How Stablecoins Will Transform Banking | Charles Calomiris
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T12:00:00+00:00
Duration: 50 min 9 s
Description: In Episode 438 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Charles Calomiris, former Chief Economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, about his forthcoming paper “How Stablecoins Wi

8 days ago

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In Episode 438 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Charles Calomiris, former Chief Economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, about his forthcoming paper “How Stablecoins Will Transform Banking,” which is based on a presentation he delivered at the Hoover Institution’s annual monetary policy conference this past May.

Demetri and Charles spend the first hour of their conversation laying out what stablecoins are and why Calomiris believes they are poised to transform our standard units of account through a revolution in real-time payments and a wholesale reinvention of the banking system, monetary policy, and the role of the dollar internationally.

They discuss the significance of the recently signed “Genius Act,” explore the importance of bank charter modernization, and consider the broad public benefits of separating loans from deposits—ranging from faster, programmable settlement and greater competition in financial services to a reduction of systemic risk in areas where bank lending has become increasingly overconcentrated.

The second hour is devoted to exploring some of the most important short- and long-term implications of stablecoin adoption, including:

(1) Antitrust concerns over natural monopolies and network effects in stablecoin payment rails.

(2) Near-term boost to demand for U.S. government debt, including the potential issuance of tokenized bills for gross real-time settlement.

(3) Longer-term prospect of moving away from the dollar as the primary unit of account toward consumer bundles tied to assets, goods, and services that better reflect people’s spending patterns—along with the implications for monetary policy, seigniorage, capital flows, and the preservation of purchasing power in these new currencies.

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00:00 Introduction
03:10 Background on the How Stable Coins Will Transform Banking
03:37 Hoover Institute Presentation
04:16 Financial Innovations Panel
05:23 Modernizing the Bank Charter
06:20 Political Resistance to Stable Coins
09:09 Blockchain Technology Explained
13:14 Stable Coins vs. Traditional Banking
15:34 Current State of Stable Coins
16:55 Future of Stable Coins in Retail
17:54 Global Dollar Network
19:35 Yield-Bearing Stable Coins
22:06 Impact on Loan Origination Business
26:55 Separation of Lending and Payments
28:58 Real Estate Lending and Systemic Risk
38:23 Future of Monetary Policy and Stable Coins
47:47:05 Topics for the Second Hour