IMF warns: Stablecoins in US dollars during a crisis may trigger “bank runs” risk

Deep Tide TechFlow update: On July 13, Digital Asset reported that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released on July 10 a research report titled “The Fragility of Stablecoins and Pegged Exchange Rate Regimes.”

The report said that dollar-pegged stablecoins can improve FX accessibility and reduce transaction costs in environments where banks or official FX markets cannot meet dollar demand; but during crises, stablecoin prices can act as a real-time signal of dollar shortages, accelerating large-scale shifts of funds from local-currency assets to dollar assets, triggering systemic risks similar to “bank runs.”

Simulation data showed that in economies with higher stablecoin adoption, the probability of a crisis rose from 3.9% to 7.4%, and in the worst-case scenario for exchange-rate deviations, residents’ welfare declined by up to 6.3%. Citing Bolivia as an example, the report noted that since the country opened digital asset trading in 2024, the USDT price has become the primary reference indicator for the parallel market’s dollar exchange rate. The IMF recommended that regulators adopt macroprudential measures such as temporary restrictions on large transactions and panic sell-offs.