BIS Research Shows Stablecoins Circumvent Capital Controls While Dollarization Accelerates

According to a Bank for International Settlements working paper published in July 2026, stablecoins are bypassing capital controls that reduce traditional bank dollarization by up to 32 percentage points. BIS economists Boris Hofmann, Aaron Mehrotra, and Jan Paulick analyzed data from over 130 economies spanning 30 years, supplemented by stablecoin flow data from Chainalysis covering 184 countries from 2017 to 2024.

Stablecoin market capitalization has nearly tripled since 2023, driven primarily by Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, which together account for over 80% of total stablecoin market value. The researchers found no statistically significant relationship between cross-border stablecoin restrictions and inflow volumes, contrasting sharply with traditional banking regulations. The paper attributes this to stablecoins operating on public blockchains outside supervised financial institutions, making them inaccessible to existing regulatory tools.