Swiss National Bank warns stablecoins may disrupt monetary policy

The Swiss National Bank has added a new item to its list of worries. It’s not inflation or the franc this time. It’s stablecoins. Speaking at an event in Zurich on September 30, 2026, SNB Governing Board member Petra Tschudin warned that large stablecoins could interfere with how monetary policy reaches the real economy. Her prescription was regulation, designed so that central bankers keep their hands on the controls. What Tschudin actually said Tschudin’s central concern is something economists call monetary policy transmission. When a central bank changes its policy rate, it counts on that move rippling outward. Commercial banks adjust what they charge for loans and pay on deposits, and eventually households and businesses feel the change. That chain runs through what’s known as the two-tier financial system. The central bank sits at the top and deals with commercial banks. Those banks, in turn, deal with everyone else. Tschudin argued that stablecoins operate outside this structure. If deposits drift away from commercial banks and into stablecoins, the argument goes, the pipes the SNB uses to steer borrowing costs could get leakier. The endgame, in Tschudin’s framing, is that t...