Paolo Tasca's Keynote at the UKCBA Annual Dinner

On December 9th, 2025,  Exponential Science Co-founder and Chairman Paolo Tasca delivered a keynote address at the UK Chinese Bankers' Association Annual Dinner at the historic Fishmongers' Hall in London, exploring the rapidly evolving landscape of digital currencies and the future of global finance.

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Money as Infrastructure Competition

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Tasca's speech centred on a provocative thesis: we are witnessing the emergence of a new "multichain financial system order" where monetary power increasingly depends not just on economic fundamentals, but on the strength and resilience of digital infrastructure. As he argued, currencies now compete on technological rails, data integrity, network effects, and governance, transforming money itself into an infrastructure competition.

Drawing on his 2024 Project Syndicate article "The Struggle for Currency Supremacy," Tasca reframed the central question facing policymakers: it's no longer "What replaces the Dollar?" but rather "What combinations of rails and forms of sovereign money will countries choose to support trade, investment, and financial stability?"

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The CBDC vs. Stablecoin Dynamic

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A key focus of the address was the emerging tension between publicly issued Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and privately issued stablecoins. While central banks worldwide remain in experimental phases, with only 2% having launched CBDCs and 33% in pilot, the private sector has already achieved large-scale stablecoin adoption, with the market reaching approximately $309 billion.

However, Tasca warned that first-mover advantage may not benefit today's early runners. As CBDCs and traditional finance become increasingly integrated with digital assets, only compliant, fully reserved stablecoins issued by regulated entities will survive the "compliance perimeter" of future financial infrastructure.

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Coexistence and Interoperability

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Rather than predicting a winner-takes-all scenario, Tasca outlined a vision of coexistence where CBDCs serve as the public anchor of trust and settlement, while stablecoins and tokenised deposits provide the innovation and user experience layer. The keyword, he emphasised, is interoperability, the ability of diverse networks to exchange information and settle assets safely and compliantly across domains.

For China specifically, Tasca highlighted the strategic importance of building robust digital infrastructure, participating in shaping global standards, and ensuring that digitalisation strengthens rather than weakens monetary sovereignty.

Concluding with his vision for the future, Tasca advocated for a hybrid model that blends decentralisation with structured governance, merging the transparency of decentralised systems with the scalability and regulatory compliance of centralised ones. In this future, private innovation is "crowded in" around public money, rather than drifting into unregulated or foreign digital currencies.

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