Ripple Exec Forces Central Banks to Support Regulated Stablecoins

Matthew Osborne, Ripple’s UK and Europe policy director, is urging central banks to stop treating stablecoins as an external threat and instead move well-regulated issuers into core safeguards, arguing that supervision plus access to official infrastructure can make stablecoins a net stabilizer for payments and settlements.

Writing for the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum on January 19, 2026, Osborne said stablecoins have gone far beyond a niche experiment, citing a market value of “over $300 billion” and annual transaction volumes he wrote now surpass Visa and Mastercard combined. He argued that momentum in the US could accelerate after the Genius Act, which he said would introduce federal rules and allow banks to issue stablecoins.

The Ripple CEO described the shift as already visible at the central banks themselves. He pointed to the European Central Bank’s recent recognition of the benefits of stablecoins for cross-border payments and its vision that tomorrow’s financial system will accommodate multiple forms of money. He also cited the Bank of England’s position that stablecoins could support “faster, cheaper retail and wholesale payments” as part of a “multi-money” system backed by central bank money.

Ripple Exec: Bring Stablecoins into the Safety Net

Central to his argument is the assertion that stablecoins should be treated as an incremental evolution rather than a hostile replacement. “Regulated stablecoins can play a key role in financial markets alongside other forms of money,” Osborne wrote. “First, stablecoins will complement the existing financial system rather than replace it. This is evolution, not revolution.” He then added: “The solution lies in channeling the stablecoin momentum through central banks, not fighting it.”

Osborne argues that central bank money will remain essential as a risk-free settlement tool and secure store of value, but its relative role in digital markets could change. He pointed to atomic settlement, where parts of a transaction are settled simultaneously and conditionally, reducing the traditional need to use central bank money purely to limit settlement risk.

Where stablecoins could be structurally preferable, he wrote, are cross-border flows and multi-chain markets. “Cross-border payments are an example of this, given that stablecoins can move value anywhere in the world in seconds,” the Ripple executive said.

“In contrast, central bank money is likely less suitable for cross-border payments, as access may be geographically limited and the adoption of on-chain central bank money is far from universal across the world.” He also argued that stablecoins will likely exist in more blockchain networks than central bank money, making same-chain settlement between tokenized assets and cash more feasible while interoperability remains uneven.

Central banks have repeatedly warned that stablecoins could drain money from bank deposits, weakening banks’ credit creation and potentially amplifying stress events. Osborne pushed back, arguing that risk is exaggerated because markets already accommodate instruments backed by highly liquid assets, money market funds, electronic money and ‘small banks’, without causing sustained deposit runs.

His larger point is that regulation, while necessary, is insufficient without a safety net. “But regulation alone is not enough,” Osborne wrote. “Stablecoin issuers do not have access to the safety net that gives bank deposits their resilience. Without it, even well-managed stablecoins are more vulnerable to shocks – as evidenced when USDC temporarily lost its peg after exposure to Silicon Valley Bank in 2023.”

He argued that central banks should consider expanding elements of that safety net, including allowing well-regulated stablecoin issuers to hold some of their backup assets in central bank accounts, offering liquidity insurance against market-wide shocks, and providing more direct access to payment systems to reduce layered risk.

The Ripple exec concluded by positioning the choice for central banks as strategic: oppose stablecoins and risk the market scaling outside the official sphere of influence, or “bring them inside the tent,” with development shaped by prudential supervision and access to infrastructure as tokenized settlement rails mature.

At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $1.9216.

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