Digital Dollar Dominance Is a Euro Call to Arms

European finance is teeming with blockchain experiments once more. Bank network SWIFT is launching a distributed ledger plan. Nine banks including ING Groep NV and Unicredit SpA are readying a euro-denominated stablecoin. A digital euro issued by the European Central Bank is inching closer to reality, as is interbank settlement on the blockchain. The battle-weary “Bitcoin bad, blockchain good” class of 2015 may be forgiven for thinking it’s fallen into H.G. Wells’s time machine.

Is it FOMO all over again? Perhaps. Stablecoins are still overwhelmingly used for trading more speculative tokens like Bitcoin, even as Citigroup Inc. expects as much as $4 trillion in stablecoin issuance by 2030. But there are real wolves at the door, with Silicon Valley's hunger for a bigger slice of finance extending into artificial intelligence. Crypto regulation has leveled the playing field and launched a thousand stablecoin ships. Even if TradFi lenders may privately hope that none make it back to port, they’re also worried about missing the digital boat and leaking more revenue if they don’t take part.