Europe risks losing control of its economic future to the US dollar unless it brings the euro onto the blockchain rails, according to Jan-Oliver Sell, CEO of bank-backed stablecoin project Qivalis.
The warning reflects growing concern among European banks and policymakers that the next phase of global finance, increasingly built on blockchain infrastructure, is overwhelmingly dominated by dollar-pegged stablecoins such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC.
“If we don’t have a euro onchain with depth of liquidity, then the only alternative is the US dollar,” Sell told CoinDesk. “It is a real risk to Europe’s financial and digital sovereignty.”
Stablecoins are no longer just crypto. They are now at the core of financial systems globally, with a market value of about $314 billion currently, but could rise to somewhere between $800 billion and $1.15 trillion in the next five years, according to a recent Jeffries calculation.
In traditional finance, the euro accounts for about 20% to 25% of global activity, making it the world’s second reserve currency, Sell said. Onchain, however, its presence is almost non-existent.
“In the blockchain space, the euro makes up about 0.2% of transactions,” Sell said. “It’s a huge disruption.”
Top 12 EU Banks Fighting for Stablecoin Dominance
Qivalis, backed by a consortium of 12 major European banks including ING, UniCredit and BBVA, is trying to close this gap by issuing a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin.
The project is targeting a launch as soon as regulatory approval is secured, with Sell pointing to the second half of the year as a target, depending on licensing timetables with the Dutch central bank.
Sell said the consortium aims to build the “standard” euro-denominated token for global crypto markets, effectively creating a European alternative to dominant dollar stablecoins.
“We want to be the largest issuer of euro stablecoins globally,” he said. At its core, Qivalis positions itself as infrastructure rather than just a token. “We are building the interface between the blockchain and the euro,” Sell said. “It needs to be available wherever the use case is.”
Qivalis is designed to solve a key problem that has so far held euro stablecoins back: fragmentation.
“A few banks trying to issue their own coins just further fragments the space,” Sell said. “Bringing institutions together creates the distribution and liquidity needed to make it workable.”
Not the ECB’s digital euro
The project comes as the European Central Bank (ECB) continues work on a digital euro, which it aims to release by 2029 at the earliest, but Sell said the two efforts are fundamentally different.
ECB President Christine Lagarde recently said that the bank had completed its part of the central bank’s digital euro and that it was now up to the political institutions to act. The project, which aims to create a public digital means of payment, is under review by the European Council and the European Parliament.
Qivalis will issue a private, MiCA-regulated stablecoin, while the ECB’s plans rely on centralized infrastructure.
“We don’t see it as competition,” Sell said. “It’s an improvement on the same economic stack.”
He described a “monetary stack” where central bank money sits on centralized systems, while blockchain-based use cases, such as cross-border payments and onchain settlement, require a euro-native asset on public networks.
“At the moment, if you want to operate onchain, you’re effectively forced into the dollar,” he said.
A race towards dollar dominance
The urgency of the project is linked to how quickly financial activity is shifting towards blockchain-based systems – from crypto trading to global payments and decentralized finance.
Qivalis is betting that a bank-backed, regulated approach can compete with established dollar stablecoins by building liquidity and integrating across exchanges, custodians and DeFi platforms.
“We’re looking to build that whole ecosystem around the euro on the chain,” Sell said.
Part of the challenge is not just issuing the token, but creating demand in markets where dollarstablecoins are already deeply embedded.
Sells pointed to currency risk as one of the reasons why euro-denominated alternatives could gain traction.
“If you’re a European user earning returns in dollars, you’re also exposed to currency risk,” he said, noting that exchange rate movements can offset returns.
A question of financial sovereignty
As more financial activity moves onto the blockchain rails, the absence of a widely adopted euro stablecoin could make Europe structurally dependent on dollar-based infrastructure.
“One of the risks is that as more activity moves up the chain, if there’s no usable euro, then everything just happens in dollars,” he said.
“We seek to build a cornerstone of European digital autonomy. If we don’t have this, we will face dollarization.”
The goal, he added, is not to replace the dollar outright, but to ensure that the euro remains competitive in a rapidly evolving financial system.
“It’s about putting the euro back in its place as the second global reserve currency in this area as well,” Sell said. “It’s about putting the economic future back in our hands as Europeans.”
