Est. 2021 · Washington D.C.
An independent research institute examining the structural transformation of monetary systems, capital formation, and the political economy of financial power.
Working Paper Series
The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts do not regulate stablecoins. They institutionalise a private monetary layer beneath the Federal Reserve system, transferring money creation authority to entities with no public mandate and no lender-of-last-resort obligation.
The second-order effects of stablecoin dollarisation extend beyond monetary policy transmission. This paper maps the structural consequences for Treasury market depth, Federal Reserve balance sheet composition, and systemic liquidity in stress scenarios.
Wage payment in stablecoins is not a fintech convenience. It is the mechanism by which gig-economy classification frameworks are extended into the monetary layer, severing worker compensation from regulated banking infrastructure.
Stablecoin reserve requirements create a new competing demand for short-duration Treasuries and reserve-adjacent instruments, distorting the Fed's rate corridor mechanics at precisely the moment monetary policy transmission is already compromised.
The decision to route monetary infrastructure through private stablecoin issuers simultaneously contracts domestic credit creation and forecloses the sovereign digital currency option; two distinct failures that compound in any liquidity stress event.
As stablecoin issuers capture deposit-equivalent functions without deposit insurance obligations, the regulated banking sector faces structural competitive disadvantage; not from innovation, but from regulatory asymmetry that the GENIUS Act codifies rather than corrects.
Programmable money is not neutral infrastructure. The same technical properties that enable stablecoin compliance also enable payment censorship, transaction surveillance, and the construction of a permanent, immutable financial record for every participant in the system.
The Triffin Dilemma described the inherent tension between the dollar's domestic and international roles. Stablecoin dollarisation does not resolve this tension; it accelerates it, exporting dollar-denominated monetary instability to jurisdictions with no voice in Federal Reserve policy decisions.
Current IRS property classification of stablecoins imposes a compliance architecture on everyday transactions that is invisible at the point of adoption and catastrophic at the point of audit; a hidden tax on the monetary infrastructure Congress is simultaneously mandating.
Data in Context
The Institute's thesis predates Congressional action. The trajectory was visible before the legislation. Source: DeFiLlama, May 2026.
Market cap 2018
~$3B
Market cap May 2026
$323.35B
Growth factor
100×+
Fellows
THT · New York
Former Chief Economist and Global Strategist; Silicon Valley venture capital, $20B+ AUM
DIF · London
Former Managing Director; European institutional asset management, long-duration sovereign capital
HEM · Washington D.C.
Senior Fellow Emeritus; three decades in multilateral development institutions and federal monetary policy
Forthcoming Fellows
AKM · Zurich
Adrian K. Menger
Insurance risk; compliance technology; AI-driven asset valuation
GWT · Bermuda
Gideon W. Tobin
Elite wealth structures; alternative asset protection; jurisdictional arbitrage
HSM · Singapore
Helena S. Myrdal
Capital flight; family offices; real-world asset policy integration
About
The Cantillon Institute was established in 2021 to examine systemic transformations in monetary architecture before they achieve political consensus. The Institute publishes working papers, maintains a network of independent research fellows, and operates without institutional funding from the entities it examines.
The Institute's name references Richard Cantillon (c. 1680–1734), whose Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général established the foundational observation that monetary expansion benefits those closest to the source of new money before the broader price level adjusts; an effect now known as the Cantillon Effect.