A new academic report argues that Bitcoin (BTC) and even the U.S. dollar ultimately derive value from collective belief—but warns that stablecoins may be the most fragile link between traditional money and blockchain because they reintroduce the very intermediaries crypto was designed to remove.
The analysis, published in February 2026 by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and LTI@UniTo, a think tank affiliated with the University of Turin, asks whether blockchain can genuinely decentralize ‘money, contracts and finance.’ Lead author Bruno Biais of HEC Paris and other financial… Read more






