BankThink

A primary criticism of stablecoins harks back to the era of free banking, when individual banks printed their own notes. But that era of private money bears little resemblance to the modern realities of stablecoin issuance.

As governors prepare to designate new "opportunity zones," lenders and investors should take advantage of the chance to target capital to communities where it will both do good and generate strong returns.

Banks can price in risk and manage their way around both left-wing and right-wing administrations. But the kind of uncertainty that arises from today's brand of politics is impossible to model.

As the regulatory landscape for digital assets becomes clearer, it is vital that stablecoin reserves, custody and settlement services, and the provision of liquidity not be concentrated within a small number of companies.

Efforts by individual states to rewrite existing rules governing interstate bank lending risk throwing the entire system into chaos. Only Congress has the ability to reestablish a workable set of national rules.

The new law's reciprocal and custodial deposit provisions recognize what the evidence has shown for two decades. They should spur, not substitute for, the broader work of protecting America's depositors.

The recently announced consortium of crypto companies behind OpenUSD, a new dollar-denominated stablecoin, will have to demonstrate that it can build partnerships with banks and intermediaries before it can challenge USDC and Tether.

Investors in a panic about private credit valuations need to draw a distinction between funds backing AI-threatened software companies and those whose collateral includes the hard assets of frontier AI companies themselves.

As written, new capital standards for U.S. banks fail to account for the additional risk posed by many home loan clients who obtain second mortgages. Fixing the problem will significantly reduce the rule's benefit to banks.

The only thing we know about the next financial crisis is that it won't look like the last one. But specific changes to bank safety and soundness requirements and clearer regulatory authorities would help us respond.