Stablecoins’ Shadow FX Market Is Becoming a Corporate Treasury Issue

Stablecoins are increasingly being viewed by corporate finance teams as less a disruption than an addition. They are infrastructure, plumbing, pipes, a new rail and so on and so forth.

On Wednesday (April 1), for example, blockchain finance firm Ripple introduced a Digital Asset Accounts and Unified Treasury platform designed to let chief financial officers (CFOs) and treasury teams view, hold and manage fiat and digital liquidity held within their bank and custody providers within a single system.

But the addition of digital assets, particularly stablecoins, to traditional financial ecosystems is inherently disruptive, as a new March working paper by economists at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) alleges. The report highlighted that stablecoins have increasingly come to function as an alternative foreign exchange (FX) channel through which companies, investors and individuals can convert local currencies into synthetic dollars.

After all, a large share of stablecoin demand (70%) originates from outside the United States, meaning these flows inherently involve foreign exchange conversion. In effect, the report found, a second, digitally mediated FX market has emerged. It’s one that runs alongside traditional spot and swap markets but is governed by different constraints.

Corporate treasury has long operated on a core assumption that there is one global dollar market, and it is ultimately anchored in banks, central banks and regulated FX venues.

That assumption may no longer fully hold for finance leaders.

See also: Dollar Dominance Looms Over Global Banks’ G7 Stablecoin Ambitions

When FX Stops Having a Single Price

In a frictionless world, buying dollars directly in the FX market or indirectly via stablecoins should be the same in cost. But in practice, this parity frequently breaks down across blockchain-induced persistent “parity deviations,” or price gaps between acquiring dollar exposure through stablecoins versus traditional FX routes. Stablecoins introduce segmentation, and with it, inefficiencies that reflect underlying economic and institutional frictions.

These deviations are not trivial. In some currencies, particularly those associated with macroeconomic instability or capital controls, the gaps can reach several percentage points and fluctuate significantly over time. In contrast, major currencies such as the euro or British pound exhibit tighter alignment, suggesting more efficient arbitrage.

Perhaps the most significant finding in the BIS report is that these dynamics do not remain confined to the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Stablecoin flows have measurable spillover effects on traditional FX markets. An exogenous increase in stablecoin inflows can lead to three simultaneous outcomes: wider parity deviations, depreciation of the local currency and increased costs of synthetic dollar funding in traditional markets.

The latter is captured through deviations from covered interest parity (CIP), a benchmark condition that links interest rates and exchange rates across currencies. In practical terms, this means that stress originating in the stablecoin market can propagate into conventional financial channels, affecting how banks and institutions access dollar liquidity.

A separate recent report from the New York Federal Reserve, “Stablecoins vs. Tokenized Deposits: The Narrow Banking Debate Revisited,” found that, in contrast to stablecoins, tokenized bank-issued deposits can fund loans and investments, tying money creation to credit expansion.

Read more: Stablecoin Fragmentation Creates New Risks for Businesses

Rethinking Treasury Assumptions

For corporates with exposure to volatile currencies, stablecoin adoption in local markets can act as an early signal of stress. Treasury teams can observe spikes in stablecoin demand as potentially a leading indicator of capital flight and potential FX pressure, incorporating these signals into hedging strategies and scenario planning.

At the same time, stablecoins can amplify volatility. Because arbitrage between stablecoin and traditional FX markets is constrained, price gaps can persist longer than expected. This challenges standard assumptions embedded in hedging models, which often rely on efficient market convergence. Treasury teams may, as a result, need to reassess hedge effectiveness, particularly in markets where parity deviations are large and persistent.

Operationally, this environment could reward sophistication. Leading treasury functions may begin to integrate multi-venue FX strategies, evaluating when stablecoins offer a cost or speed advantage and when traditional channels remain superior. This does not imply wholesale adoption, but rather selective use cases such as intra-company transfers, supplier payments in constrained markets, or liquidity buffering during periods of FX stress.

Still, findings in “Waiting for Certainty: Why Most CFOs Are Holding Back on Crypto and Stablecoins,” the latest installment of the PYMNTS Intelligence exclusive series, The 2026 Certainty Project, reveal that just 13% of mid-market firms surveyed report using stablecoins.