Israel’s Central Bank Chief Warns Stablecoins Are Now Systemic as Digital Shekel Advances

Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron signaled that the country is preparing for far more active oversight of stablecoins.

Speaking at the Bank of Israel’s Payments in the Evolving Era conference in Tel Aviv, Yaron framed private digital dollars as a payments force that regulators can no longer treat as peripheral.

Yaron stressed that stablecoins have already become deeply embedded in global money flows, noting a market capitalization above $300 billion and more than $2 trillion in monthly transaction volume.

“Given adoption among the public, it cannot be said that this is a marginal phenomenon,” he told attendees before comparing the sector’s scale to the balance sheet of a mid-sized global commercial bank.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose values are pegged to an external reference, such as fiat currencies. These tokens help investors bypass price volatility associated with other digital assets and are widely used in trading and cross-border transactions.

The governor highlighted the industry’s concentration risk, pointing out that 99% of stablecoin activity is controlled by just two issuers: Tether and Circle. Such centralization, he argued, amplifies systemic vulnerabilities and raises the stakes for regulatory clarity.

Yaron then laid out a series of pillars private issuers and supervisors must prioritize, these included fully 1:1 reserve backing, liquid reserve assets and the creation of a scalable regulatory framework.

Plans for a digital shekel were also discussed at the conference by Yoav Soffer, head of Israeli digital shekel project, who said that the digital shekel would become “central bank money for everything” while releasing a 2026 roadmap that included an intention to provide the official recommendations by the end of the year.

“The revelation of the new roadmap for 2026 demonstrates that the Bank of Israel, like the ECB, is accelerating the pace to the launch of the CBDC,” Ben Samocha, CEO of media company CryptoJungle, told CoinDesk.