Dr. Leary and Thunj Chantramonklasri coauthored an article examining how the rapid rise of dollar-pegged stablecoins is driving a new form of "digital dollarisation," extending the monetary power of the United States while introducing new risks to central banks and global financial stability.

The article explains how dollar-backed stablecoins—digital tokens pegged one-to-one to the US dollar and backed by reserve assets—are connecting traditional finance and cryptocurrency across borders. Transaction volumes grew from roughly $565 billion in 2020 to about $11 trillion in 2025, and as of early March 2026 Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC jointly accounted for around 84 per cent of total stablecoin market capitalisation, with 99 per cent of stablecoins in circulation denominated in dollars.

Drawing on on-chain analytics and institutional data from Visa, the IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements, the article highlights how stablecoins expand the dollar's reach into emerging markets—particularly Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East, where flows reach roughly 7–8 per cent of GDP—while weakening central banks' control over domestic liquidity, exchange rates, and capital flows. It further examines how the dollar assets backing these tokens, primarily short-term Treasuries, tie stablecoin growth directly to US money markets, creating channels through which crypto-market volatility and large-scale redemptions can spill back into short-term funding markets—risks the authors expect to grow as adoption expands.