The Wharton Blockchain and Digital Asset Project (BDAP) has released The Stablecoin Toolkit: Part II — Law, Regulation, and Monetary Policy, the second installment in its Stablecoin Toolkit series. Part I mapped the financial and market dimensions of stablecoins; Part II follows that heterogeneity into the domains that determine how stablecoins are actually used: private law, financial regulation, and monetary policy. Its central claim is that the same design choices separating one stablecoin from another, namely reserve composition, redemption mechanics, and custody architecture, are exactly what determine how each is treated under law and policy.

Three findings stand out. On private and commercial law, the report traces how “control” has emerged as the functional equivalent of possession for digital assets. On regulation, the report documents genuine convergence: the US (GENIUS Act), EU (MiCA), UK, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and UAE had each arrived independently at a similar regulated instrument, a fiat-referenced token redeemable at par and fully backed by segregated reserves, though algorithmic, crypto-collateralized, and synthetic designs remain largely outside these frameworks. On monetary policy, the report examines how reserve-backed stablecoins resembling narrow banking affect central bank reserve access, deposit competition, and currency substitution as dollar-denominated stablecoins circulate globally.

The report closes with policy recommendations across all four areas and detailed appendices mapping regulatory and bankruptcy treatment across major jurisdictions.

The Stablecoin Toolkit: Part II is the result of collaboration between BDAP’s steering committee and an expert working group drawn from academia, industry, and policy circles; contributors are listed below. All views expressed are those of the lead author.

The full report is available here.

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Lead Author

Sangita Gazi

Steering Committee

Austin Campbell

Daniel Hellwig

Dimitris Psarrakis

Nikhil Raghuevera

Daniel Resas

Kevin Werbach

Expert Working Group

Dan Awrey (Cornell)

Martin Carrica (Anchorage Digital)

Christian Catalini (MIT and Lightspark)

Jacek Czarnecki (Stablewatch)

Amy Davine Kim (PayPal)

Miguel Dinis Lucas (Dinis Lucas & Almeida Santos)

Lindsey Einhaus (Stripe)

Markus Franke (Mento)

Yulia Guseva (Florida State University College of Law)

Goran Karlic (WHU)

Andrei Kirilenko (Cambridge Judge)

Caitlin Long (Custodia)

Tim Massad (Harvard/Georgetown)

Urszula McCormack (King & Wood)

Jack McDonald (Ripple)

Monica Ramirez de Arellano (Anchorage Digital)

Sumved Sharma (Kepler Cannon)

Ramy Soliman (GMO Trust/Stablecoin Standard)

Jesse Spiro (Tether)

Corey Then (Circle)

Andrea Tosato (Southern Methodist University)

Helen Tu (Binance)

Harald Uhlig (University of Chicago)