Stablecoins as Public Good

Stablecoins—digital assets designed to maintain price stability by pegging to fiat currencies or collateralized reserves—have often been examined through the lens of private finance, focusing on market speculation, systemic risk, and regulatory arbitrage. This article reframes stablecoins as potential public goods, investigating their role in advancing financial inclusion, humanitarian effectiveness, and digital identity infrastructures. Drawing on recent data from the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP), and case studies across the Global South, the analysis adopts a comparative methodology, triangulating case study evidence with theoretical modeling. It applies transaction cost economics (Coase's theorem) to remittances, graph theory (max-flow/min-cut) to humanitarian aid distribution, set-theoretical analysis (via Venn modeling) to digital ID integration, and game theory to governance risks between states and private issuers.