• Finance
• General
• Stablecoins

Why 12 European banks are teaming up to save the euro from digital dollarization

In an interview with CoinDesk, the CEO of a the 12-member consortium why Europe is racing to put the euro onchain and compete with dollar dominance in crypto markets.

Melinda 2 weeks ago 7 minutes read 0 comments

Finance

Share

Share this article

Why 12 European banks are teaming up to save the euro from digital dollarization

In an interview with CoinDesk, the CEO of a the 12-member consortium why Europe is racing to put the euro onchain and compete with dollar dominance in crypto markets.

By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Jamie Crawley

Mar 31, 2026, 3:50 p.m.

Make preferred on

What to know:

• European banks warn that without a deep, liquid euro stablecoin, financial activity on blockchains will default to dollar-based tokens, threatening Europe’s financial and digital sovereignty.
• Qivalis, a MiCA-regulated euro stablecoin backed by 12 major EU banks, aims to become the default euro token on public blockchains and is targeting a launch in the second half of the year, pending regulatory approval.
• The project positions itself as complementary to the European Central Bank’s planned digital euro, seeking to ensure the euro retains its role as the world’s second reserve currency in an increasingly onchain financial system.

Europe risks losing control of its financial future to the U.S. dollar unless it brings the euro onto blockchain rails, according to Jan-Oliver Sell, CEO of bank-backed stablecoin project Qivalis.

The warning reflects the growing concern among European banks and policymakers that the next phase of global finance, increasingly built on blockchain infrastructure, is being dominated overwhelmingly 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 U.S. dollar,” Sell told CoinDesk. “That’s 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 capitalization of roughly $314 billion currently but could rise to anywhere 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 roughly 20% to 25% of global activity, making it the world’s second reserve currency, Sell said. Onchain, however, its presence is almost nonexistent.

“In the blockchain space, the euro makes up about 0.2% of transactions,” Sell said. “That’s a huge disconnect.”

Top 12 EU banks vying for stablecoin dominance

Qivalis, backed by a consortium of 12 major European banks including ING, UniCredit and BBVA, is attempting to close that 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 goal, depending on licensing timelines with the Dutch central bank.

Sell said the consortium aims to build the “default” euro-denominated token for global crypto markets, effectively creating a European alternative to dominant dollar stablecoins.

“We want to be the main issuer of euro stablecoins globally,” he said. At its core, Qivalis is positioning itself as infrastructure rather than just a token. “We’re building the interface between blockchain and the euro,” Sell said. “It has to be available wherever the use cases are.”

Qivalis is designed to address a key issue that has held back euro stablecoins so far: fragmentation.

“A couple of banks trying to issue their own coins just fragments the space further,” Sell said. “Bringing institutions together creates the distribution and liquidity needed to make it usable.”

Not the ECB’s digital euro

The project comes as the European Central Bank (ECB) continues work on a digital euro it aims to release no earlier than 2029, but Sell said the two efforts are fundamentally different.