Quick answer: In its 2022 Annual Economic Report chapter “The future monetary system,” the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) argued that cryptocurrencies have deep structural flaws (an unstable nominal anchor, a tendency to fragment, and a scalability trilemma) that make them unfit to be the backbone of money. Its position is not anti-innovation: the same chapter says programmability, composability, and tokenisation are not exclusive to crypto and work better when built on central bank money, fast payment systems, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
Updated 07/17/2026. By Jake Claver. Educational content, not investment advice.
The BIS is the Basel-based institution often called the “central bank for central banks.” When it dedicates a full chapter of its flagship annual report to the monetary system, that document tends to frame how regulators and central banks talk about the topic for years afterward. The 2022 chapter is one of the more widely cited critiques of crypto as monetary infrastructure, and it is worth reading for what it actually says rather than the headlines it generated.
This post walks through the chapter’s core claims, using the primary source. The two receipts at the end link straight to the BIS chapter and the full PDF, so every point here can be checked against the original.
What the BIS actually argued in 2022
The chapter opens from a specific vantage point: money is a social convention that works because people trust it, and central banks sit at the root of that trust. From there the BIS chapter makes two moves. First, it argues that crypto in its current form cannot deliver the stability and network effects that a monetary system needs. Second, it argues that the genuinely useful features people associate with crypto can be delivered on public infrastructure instead.
The report puts it plainly: CBDCs and retail fast payment systems “are well placed to serve the public interest through greater convenience and lower costs, while maintaining the system’s integrity,” and that permissioned distributed ledger technology “can also play a constructive role, eg when central banks work together in multi-CBDC arrangements.” The document frames these rails as “fully compatible with programmability, composability and tokenisation.”
The three structural flaws it named in crypto
The critique rests on three specific problems, not vague skepticism.
- No stable nominal anchor. Crypto has to reach for stablecoins to hold a steady value, and stablecoins in turn try to import the credibility of central bank money. The BIS reads that dependence as evidence that the system cannot generate stability on its own.
- Fragmentation instead of network effects. Normal money tends toward a “winner takes all” dynamic. The report argues crypto shows the opposite: as activity crowds onto one chain, congestion and fees rise, which pushes users toward competing chains. The BIS describes this as “the more the sorrier.”
- The scalability trilemma. Permissionless blockchains struggle to be scalable, secure, and decentralised at the same time. Keeping validators honest tends to mean limiting throughput and keeping fees elevated.
Why stablecoins are central to the argument
The stablecoin point does a lot of work in the chapter. If a token needs to be pegged to a sovereign currency to be usable for payments, then the sovereign currency, and the institution that stands behind it, is still doing the monetary heavy lifting. The 2022 report landed months before and after several high-profile stablecoin and lending failures, which the BIS treated as illustrations of the same structural weakness rather than one-off accidents. The takeaway the authors draw is not that tokens are useless, but that a token’s stability is only as good as the reserves and the credibility behind it.
Tokenisation and programmability are not crypto’s alone
This is the part of the chapter that often gets lost. The BIS is enthusiastic about tokenisation. Its complaint is about where tokenisation sits, not whether it should happen. The report argues that central banks, as issuers of the settlement asset, can support the tokenisation of regulated instruments such as deposits, while preserving protections like deposit insurance and regulatory oversight. Programmability and composability, in this reading, are engineering features that can run on top of public money just as easily as on a permissionless chain.
That distinction matters for anyone building in payments or asset settlement, because it separates the technology story from the ideology. You can favor tokenised settlement and still agree with the BIS that the settlement asset should be central bank money.
From the 2022 critique to the unified ledger
The 2022 chapter was not a one-off. The BIS has since developed the idea into a concrete design it calls the “unified ledger.” In a June 2025 announcement, the BIS described bringing tokenised central bank reserves, commercial bank deposits, and government bonds onto a single programmable ledger, integrating messaging, settlement, and reconciliation while keeping central bank money at the core. The through-line from 2022 is direct: keep the trust anchor, adopt the tooling. You can follow the broader body of work on the BIS site.
Why this matters
For institutions weighing digital-asset infrastructure, the BIS chapter is a map of the questions regulators will ask. It reframes the debate away from “crypto versus banks” and toward “which settlement asset and which governance model.” In the United States, the CFTC’s digital assets resources cover the commodity-market side of that same conversation. None of this tells you what any asset is worth. It tells you how the people who write the rules are thinking about the plumbing, which is a different and often more durable signal.
Common questions
Did the BIS say crypto is worthless?
No. The BIS argued that crypto has structural flaws that make it unfit as the foundation of a monetary system: an unstable nominal anchor, a tendency to fragment, and a scalability trilemma. It did not claim tokens have no use, and it was positive about tokenisation as a technology.
What is the BIS 2022 report actually called?
It is Chapter III, “The future monetary system,” of the BIS Annual Economic Report published in June 2022. The full chapter and PDF are linked in the receipts below.
Does the BIS support tokenisation?
Yes. The chapter says programmability, composability, and tokenisation are not the preserve of crypto and can be built on central bank money, CBDCs, and fast payment systems. The BIS later developed this into its “unified ledger” concept.
Why does the BIS focus so much on stablecoins?
Because stablecoins try to borrow the credibility of central bank money to stay stable. The BIS reads that dependence as evidence that crypto cannot produce a stable nominal anchor on its own.
Is this investment advice about any coin?
No. The chapter is about monetary-system design and governance, not asset prices. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.
This content is educational only. It is not tax, legal, or investment advice. Check primary sources and speak with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
