In this episode of Stablecoins Around the World, I focus on the United Kingdom.
Joining me is Rhys Bidder, who brings deep experience in central banking, financial regulation and crypto services to the question of how stablecoins are changing global finance and, more specifically, the landscape in the UK.
Rhys has taught at Cambridge University and Kings College, where he was also Deputy Director of the Qatar Centre for Global Banking and Finance. He’s spent some time working at the Federal Reserve. He’s also worked with the Bank of England, and more recently with the Central Bank of Ireland, focusing on stablecoins, CBDCs, tokenization and digital payments. Most of his time these days is advising traditional and crypto firms on the design and application of onchain money and the evolving market structure.
You can check out his body of published work here, and tune in to the episode for more on his background.
In today’s newsletter, you can find my notes on the conversation and some more background on UK stablecoin regulation.
Timestamps
05:13 — The UK’s current stablecoin regulatory framework
08:57 — The £40 billion cap and why earlier limits were difficult to apply
12:53 — The Bank of England’s proposed liquidity backstop
17:48 — What “singleness of money” gets right and wrong
22:24 — The UK-US stablecoin statement and what it signals
24:08 — How the UK compares with the US and Europe on stablecoin policy
26:48 — Tokenization as a major use case for sterling stablecoins
29:11 — Stablecoins as payment rails for fintechs and card networks
32:26 — Banks’ view of stablecoins: competition, interoperability, and backend
36:27 — Demand for dollar stablecoins in the UK
40:58 — The UK stablecoin landscape five years from now
DISCLAIMER: I never give trading ideas, and NOTHING I say is investment advice! I hold some BTC, ETH and a tiny amount of some smaller tokens, but they’re all long-term holdings – I don’t trade.
AI policy: I often use AI (Grok and Gemini) for research instead of Google, always double-checking facts. I never, and will never, use AI for writing.