Here is Mr Wolf. Mr Wolf is a European man who has never had a problem with a bank. His experience with the financial system is fabulous and he is shocked by the barbaric Americans with their high credit card fees, unreliable wire transfers, and worst of all their stablecoins.
The future of stablecoins might indeed be bright. But should it also be welcomed by people other than the issuers, criminals of various kinds and the US Treasury? No.
Of course, like every other columnist in Europe, Mr Wolf cannot deny that the people want useful things and these useful things often seem to come from the detestable Americans.
Let us assume then that the US is going to promote the use of lightly regulated stablecoins, partly in order to enhance the dominant role of the US dollar and so help finance its huge fiscal deficits. What should other countries do? The answer is to defend themselves as best they can. This is particularly true for European countries.
You see, Mr Wolf feels that stablecoins fail to meet "the three key tests of singleness, elasticity, and integrity"
What does this mean? Singleness describes the need for all forms of a given money to be exchangeable with one another at par, at all times. This is the foundation of trust in money.
Credit cards are widespread in the US. The merchant must accept a 3-5% fee on credit card transactions. I wonder if a credit card payment is really exchangeable with a cash payment. Sure, you can argue that it's not a different "form" of the money, but as more and more places stop accepting cash, card payments sure look a lot like a different form of USD -- just slightly more expensive.
Elasticity means the ability to deliver payments of all sizes without gridlock.
Last I checked, every banking institution in the Western world gets their panties in a bunch as soon as you try to send a large payment. Perhaps Mr Wolf doesn't feel that invasive questions from the bank about the legitimacy of my transaction and safety pauses and delays are not gridlock...
Integrity means the ability to curb financial crime and other illicit activities. A central role in all this is played by central banks and other regulators.
This is just silly. The central bank doesn't curb financial crime, it just demands that banks dragnet surveil their customers and let regulators selectively enforce laws against people they don't like.
Mr Wolf is also smart enough to recognize that governments are in the business of making money by making money (seignorage), but like a good little serf who loves his geriatric monarch, he feels there is nothing wrong with that:
“For the rest of the world, including Europe, wide adoption of US dollar stablecoins for payment purposes would be equivalent to the privatization of seigniorage by global actors.” This then would be yet another predatory move by the superpower.