Offshore Dollar

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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