Margaret Thatcher famously quipped that the problem with socialists is that, eventually, they run out of other people’s money. But what happens when bankers run out of other people’s money, as seems likely to happen soon? Either we end up with another calamitous financial meltdown or we innovate to serve the public interest in a manner Thatcher would have dismissed as socialist.

Before I propose one such innovative response to the looming financial quagmire, one must understand the monetary transformation currently underway, owing to the steady rise of stablecoins. Unlike Bitcoin and other c...