By: Tim Staheli
In the late 1950s, banks in Paris began lending out dollar deposits held outside the United States. Nobody realised they were founding anything. But what they’d created was the eurodollar market: dollars beyond the reach of American regulators and American banking hours, which grew from an accounting curiosity into the funding market of global finance.
Seventy years on, a French bank is exporting dollars again. Societe Generale’s digital assets subsidiary, SG-FORGE, launched its dollar stablecoin in 2025, two years after its euro one. It’s spent the year since building the token a home: a wallet integration here, an exchange listing there, a place in Europe’s settlement plans.
The precedent cuts both ways. It says the sceptics will lose, because once money escapes its home infrastructure, it doesn’t go back. It says the maximalists will lose too, because the eurodollar never replaced the domestic dollar system. It plugged into it, settled through it, and the banks that sat at the join became the ones clients couldn’t do without.
Michel Colbert, Head of Cash Clearing and Correspondent Banking at Societe Generale, and Gildas Le Treut, Societe Generale-FORGE’s Chief Business Officer, believe their group is built to sit at that join again, this time for stablecoins: one of the few banks anywhere with a major correspondent network on one side and a regulated stablecoin issuer on the other, under the same roof.
A market that talks in dollars
SG-FORGE was set up in 2020. It issued its euro stablecoin in 2023, the first stablecoin issued by a G-SIB group. The dollar followed two years later, complementing the euro strategy rather than replacing it: the two tokens serve different jobs and different clients, and the European vision stands. The commercial reason for the dollar is simple. “The stablecoin market is roughly $300 billion, and more than 99 per cent of it is pegged to the dollar,” said Le Treut. He’s right: market trackers put the total at close to $300 billion as of mid-August 2026, almost all of it in dollars.
A European bank is issuing offshore dollars because that’s where the liquidity is. That’s the eurodollar logic again, on new rails. With one difference, and it’s one the first eurodollar bankers would have envied: this money is regulated from birth. Le Treut points to America’s GENIUS Act as a reason to be in dollars now. Colbert pairs it with Europe’s MiCA. “It cannot work if there is no trust,” he said. “And one key element of trust is regulation: MiCA, and GENIUS on the US side.”
Colbert has watched the conversation change from close range. “Two years ago we were speaking about crypto-assets. Now we speak about payment infrastructure, and settlement through stablecoins,” he said. At a BAFT forum of US clearing banks earlier this year, it was among the main topics on the table.
Ten minutes, then the slow leg
Clients are specific about what they want from the new rail. Large corporates want treasury that follows the sun: settlement without cut-offs, access to liquidity around the clock, and less cash parked in pre-funding. “For retail customers, the issue is cost,” Colbert said. “Corporate clients want quick at a reasonable cost.”
Quick already exists for much of the journey. “Today we can move a payment from Southeast Asia to Societe Generale’s Paris accounts in less than ten minutes,” Colbert said. “The last leg, connecting international Swift to European settlement, takes a little longer. A stablecoin will be capable of fixing that faster.”
The bank is meanwhile working on the so-called one-leg-out connection between Swift and SEPA, and the Eurosystem is building a bridge of its own: Pontes, Latin for bridge, the European Central Bank’s project to link blockchain platforms with its TARGET settlement services.
Which is the point. Neither man argues that stablecoins replace correspondent banking; the argument is that clients will stop caring which rail they ride. “At one point, the client will probably not ask us for a digital asset,” Colbert said. “They will say: I want this payment, at this cost, at this speed. And the solution might be the stablecoin.” The winning banks, in his view, will be the ones able to take that instruction and pick the rail.
Moving in before the furniture arrives
What’s live today is connections, not flows. SG-FORGE’s tokens are listed across the crypto world, from MetaMask at the retail end to exchanges including Bitpanda, Bitvavo, Coinhouse and Bullish. They’re also being built into traditional infrastructure at Euroclear, Clearstream and Boerse Stuttgart, where they’re intended to serve as the cash leg for settling tokenised securities. On the Pythagore project, SG-FORGE says the US dollar cash leg could settle in its dollar stablecoin. Market makers including Tradias, Wintermute and Flow Traders sit alongside to provide liquidity.
The wider market is moving the same way. “We have seen a major shift from traditional finance into digital assets over the last 12 to 24 months,” Le Treut said. He points to DTCC’s plan to tokenise US Treasuries on Canton and to Pythagore, the Euroclear and Banque de France project announced last October to tokenise Europe’s €310 billion short-term commercial paper market, with a pilot due late this year. The intended uses go beyond payments: collateral management and corporate treasury are gathered into one pot and moved wherever they’re needed.
It’s a work in progress. But the path is set: adoption is widening, and volumes are picking up. The listings come first; the volumes are the next chapter.
Trust is the product
So what does a bank provide when the money can move by itself? Colbert’s answer is a role, not a rail. “The priority for the coming years is to be the orchestrator,” he said. “To connect internally and externally with the different rails, and to be capable of the ramp-on and ramp-off, which is the critical step from traditional money to stablecoin and back.”
The ramp already exists. “Every time one euro reaches a designated IBAN, it automatically creates the stablecoin on the chain,” Le Treut said. “This instant interconnection capacity is critical.” In practice, that means APIs, designated accounts, and an issuer minting and redeeming in real time. The bank sits at the join and charges for what clients can’t do without: trust, liquidity, risk management, a regulatory framework. It’s the same seat the eurodollar banks found seventy years ago.
“We are not a disruptor,” Le Treut said. “We are there to complement Societe Generale’s value proposition, and to bring the extra mile.”
In the 1950s, nobody realised they were founding anything. This time, the founding is by design.
