Eurodollar

Stablecoins

2026-08-14 09:02:39

70 years of offshore dollars: how stablecoins and self-custody changed who owes you one dollar

A TechFlowPost feature traces the history of offshore dollars from the birth of the eurodollar market to the rise of stablecoins and self-custody wallets, arguing that the core question has never gone away: who actually owes you $1? The article says the dollar has moved through several institutional containers over the past seven decades, from New York bank ledgers and London bank balance sheets to fintech databases and the reserve structures behind stablecoin issuers. At the same time, the relationship between users and their accounts has also shifted, moving from full institutional custody toward direct user control over onchain assets. The piece links three historic fault lines in the offshore dollar system to three forms of power: settlement, last-resort liquidity, and pricing. It points to the 1974 Herstatt failure, the 2008 global dollar shortage, and the eventual shutdown of the U.S. dollar LIBOR panel in June 2023. It then places Revolut, Wise, stablecoins, and Bitget Wallet along the same continuum. In that framing, stablecoins did not invent a new dollar. They separated redemption from transfer, keeping reserves in traditional finance while moving transfer onto public blockchains. Self-custody wallets, meanwhile, did not replace the issuer’s redemption promise, but changed who controls the movement of assets. The article argues that this is where the latest shift in dollar infrastructure becomes most visible.

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Eurodollar

2026-08-14 08:42:39

From Eurodollars to Stablecoins: A 70-Year Shift in Offshore Dollar Credit

Foresight has published a long-form essay by Bitget Wallet researcher Lacie Zhang tracing a 70-year line from the birth of the eurodollar market to today’s stablecoins and self-custody wallets. The piece argues that stablecoins are not a clean break from the past. Instead, they represent a new stage in the offshore expansion of the U.S. dollar, one that changes how dollar claims move rather than eliminating the traditional financial system behind redemption. Zhang revisits how Soviet and Eastern European entities moved dollars into banks in Paris and London to avoid the risk of account freezes in the United States, how post-Suez British policy helped turn those deposits into a lending market, and how U.S. regulation and later petrodollar flows helped that market grow from millions to trillions of dollars. The essay then uses the 1974 Herstatt collapse, the 2008 dollar funding squeeze, and the fall of LIBOR to show that offshore banks gained the ability to expand dollar credit but never captured final control over clearing, emergency liquidity, or pricing. The article closes by contrasting fintech apps, stablecoins, and self-custody wallets. In Zhang’s framing, stablecoins move dollar balances onto public blockchains while leaving redemption anchored to U.S. Treasuries, bank deposits, and legal claims. Self-custody wallets change something else: who controls the movement of assets.

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Policy and Re

2026-07-16 14:16:38

US-UK stablecoin statement frames an official template for offshore dollar design

The UK Treasury released a joint US-UK statement on stablecoins on July 14, laying out 10 policy points that the source article reads as far more than routine diplomatic language. Its central argument is that the document effectively turns the logic of the historical Eurodollar market into an official policy framework: a dollar-based system operating outside the United States, backed by cross-border regulatory coordination rather than informal market evolution alone. The article places special weight on point five of the statement, which says the two governments will avoid forcing issuers to maintain excessively ring-fenced resources within individual jurisdictions. It contrasts that approach with the European Union’s MiCA regime, described in the source as requiring non-bank stablecoin issuers to place 30% to 60% of customer funds in commercial banks inside the EU. In that reading, Washington and London are backing a single global reserve pool model rather than country-by-country reserve fragmentation. The source also argues that the UK is not acting as a proxy for Europe, but as a European-time-zone node for the dollar system. It links point seven, on stablecoins as settlement tools for securities and commodities markets, and point nine, on priority claims to reserves in insolvency, to a broader legal and market architecture. The article’s conclusion is that the debate is no longer only about exporting dollars, but also about exporting the rules and institutions attached to them.

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