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AMRO Warns AI-Stablecoin Loop Risks Dollar Lock for 13 Nations

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AMRO Warns AI-Stablecoin Loop Risks Dollar Lock for 13 Nations

2026-07-31 08:31 UTCBy AlphaScala Research DeskSource reporting: The Currency AnalyticsEditorial standards

AMRO Warns AI-Stablecoin Loop Risks Dollar Lock for 13 Nations

AMRO economists warn AI-stablecoin loop could lock 13 ASEAN+3 nations into dollar dependency; they urge regional data centers and local-currency tokenized money.

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Two economists from the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office have warned that the AI boom could lock thirteen countries into a dollar dependency that is harder to break than previous monetary traps. The mechanism is not coercion, they said. It is network effects, and those are nearly impossible to reverse once set.

Chengxu Fu and Xiaguo Huang, writing for AMRO, argue that the real battleground in the AI race is not which country builds the smartest models. It is which currency gets embedded into AI's financial infrastructure first. As AI systems move into logistics and inventory management – what they call agentic payments – those systems need fast, programmable settlements. Dollar-pegged stablecoins already offer that. Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, do not. Most are still in development or limited pilots, the economists said.

Stablecoins get the first-mover slot. First movers in payment networks tend to stay there, Fu and Huang said. The result is a positive feedback loop: more AI activity drives demand for stablecoins, and that pushes dollar liquidity deeper into global commerce, tilting the entire system toward U.S. financial infrastructure. Breaking that loop later would be costly and slow, they said.

A secondary effect compounds the dynamic. Stablecoins are typically backed by U.S. Treasuries. Stablecoin supply grows to meet AI-driven demand. That in turn increases demand for Treasuries, the economists said. It is a built-in buyer for American government debt, emerging from the AI economy itself.

The economists directed their warning at a specific group: the thirteen ASEAN+3 nations. These include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, and South Korea. These countries, they said, need to move now, before the stablecoin-AI loop becomes self-sustaining.

Their prescription has two parts. First, build regional data centers. If AI infrastructure in the region runs on locally owned and locally denominated systems, the dependency on dollar-priced compute weakens. Second, develop tokenized money based on local currencies: digital and programmable forms that can function inside AI-driven financial systems. The goal is to give regional AI commerce a non-dollar payment rail that works, Fu and Huang said.

Without those steps, the economists see a clear risk: ASEAN+3 nations become consumers of a financial system shaped around U.S. interests, with stablecoin usage as the transmission mechanism. The dollar's influence in global AI transactions grows, and these countries find themselves with less leverage over their own financial policies than they had before AI scaled up.

The issue is a structural concern, not a short-term market call, Fu and Huang said. They frame stablecoin dominance as a geopolitical and macroeconomic issue, not just a fintech one. Stablecoin adoption across Asia has grown sharply in recent years, driven by remittances and cross-border trade, along with institutional use. The infrastructure for dollar stablecoin use is already spreading. The warning is that AI could accelerate that spread in qualitatively different ways, because AI-driven payments are not governed by human choice. When an AI agent picks a payment rail, it picks based on what is available and fast. Right now, that is dollar stablecoins, the economists said.

The feedback loop is not hypothetical, the economists said. It is already starting. AI companies price compute in dollars. Stablecoin volumes are rising. Treasury demand from stablecoin issuers is real and growing.

Fu and Huang are not saying dollar dominance through stablecoins is inevitable. The window to build alternatives is open now, not later. Regional data centers and local-currency tokenized money take years. The clock on a meaningful regional response is already running, whether ASEAN+3 governments treat it that way or not, the economists said.

The analysis was written by Chengxu Fu and Xiaguo Huang, economists at AMRO, and targets the thirteen ASEAN+3 nations.