Stablecoins vs CBDCs vs tokenised deposits: the group chat

Sep 26, 2026 6 min read

Three lit doorways side by side, one each for a stablecoin, a CBDC and a tokenised deposit.

Kairo

Three kinds of "digital money" are fighting for the same future. They look similar in a demo and completely different underneath. Meet the cast.

	Stablecoin	CBDC	Tokenised deposit
Issued by	Private company	Central bank	Commercial bank
Backed by	Reserves (cash, treasuries)	The state itself	A bank deposit, same as your account
Who can hold it	Anyone with a wallet	Depends on design; often citizens via approved apps	That bank's customers
Runs on	Public blockchains	Usually a permissioned ledger	Bank-run or permissioned ledger
Group-chat energy	The friend who moved abroad and is thriving	The parent who joined the chat	The friend who says "let's just use the old app but better"

Three routes into one wallet: an open archway, a fenced track and a bank branch, for stablecoins, CBDCs and tokenised deposits.

Stablecoins: the one that already shipped

Hundreds of billions in circulation, moving trillions a year, usable by anyone with a phone. Their strength is openness: any app, any country, any counterparty. Their weakness is trust in a private issuer, which is why regulation of reserves and redemption rights is the whole conversation right now, and why the big jurisdictions have spent the last two years writing rules for exactly that.

CBDCs: the one governments want

A central bank digital currency is cash, but digital, issued directly by the state. Pilots exist in dozens of countries; a handful are live. The pitch is safety and financial inclusion. The pushback is privacy: money that a central authority can see, and in theory program, makes people nervous, and adoption in most pilots has been quiet. The likely landing spot is wholesale (between banks) rather than the thing in your pocket.

Tokenised deposits: the banks' counter-offer

Take an ordinary bank deposit, represent it as a token on a ledger, and you get bank-grade money that settles instantly, 24/7, inside the existing regulatory perimeter. Big banks like this because it's their money, their customers and their rules. The catch is reach: a token

from one bank doesn't automatically work with another, so interoperability is the unsolved bit.

Who wins?

Probably nobody, in the sense that all three coexist: stablecoins for open, cross-border, consumer-to-anyone money; tokenised deposits for corporate and institutional flows; CBDCs mostly in the wholesale plumbing. The real winner is whichever apps can move between them without you noticing. That's the layer Kairo lives in.

TL;DR Stablecoins are open and already everywhere. CBDCs are state money with a privacy debate. Tokenised deposits are bank money that finally learned to settle on weekends. Expect all three; use the app that speaks all three.