G7, AI and Stablecoins: The 3 Stablecoin Issues Ignored by Finance Ministers

Alert exercise. The finance ministers and governors of the G7 agreed on October 15 to organize simulations of cyberattacks using frontier AI models against the financial system. Roland Lescure and the governor of the Bank of France, Emmanuel Moulin, chaired the meeting, held on the sidelines of the IMF annual meetings. The G7 is responding to the alert issued by the Fund regarding attacks that could undermine trust in a major institution.

Cryptos, however, are nowhere to be found in the statement. The stablecoin issue remains on the desk of Andrew Bailey, the chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the G20 body that coordinates financial regulators. He was indeed present in the room.
Key points of this article:

• The G7 agreed to organize simulations of cyberattacks using frontier AI to test the resilience of the global financial system.
• The stablecoin issue has been entrusted to the FSB, which is working on projects to improve oversight and risk management associated with these digital assets.

What the G7 Finance Really Decided in Bangkok

The statement published by Bercy contains just one sentence on the subject.

<< The finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 discussed the impact of frontier AI models on cyber risks in the financial sector and ways to strengthen collective preparedness. >>

Statement from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Bangkok, October 15, 2026

The rest of the text discusses Ukraine and shocks to fertilizers. The G7 aims to mobilize at least 500 million euros to repair the Chernobyl arch, affected by a Russian drone.

The concrete detail comes from Tokyo. Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama explained to Reuters that G7 deputies had been working for weeks on << tabletop exercises >> dedicated to frontier AI. The agreement << has been validated at the ministerial level >>. A tabletop exercise is a simulation on a table. A scenario of an attack is rolled out in front of decision-makers, who must react in real-time as if it were true. The finance ministries and central banks of the G7 will write these scenarios themselves. They will be used to test existing protocols and rewrite response manuals. The G7 may involve private banks depending on the nature of the simulations. No timeline has leaked.

The IMF warned this week that an AI-assisted attack on a critical service of a financial institution could be enough to shake confidence. The Bank of England reinforced this point on the same day. Its deputy governor is working with banks on deep recovery options after an attack. His starting point is simple: current defenses are no longer immune to an AI-driven offensive.

Stablecoins: The G7 Hands Over to the FSB

Nothing on stablecoins in the Bangkok text, then. To understand why, one must look at the other meeting that was taking place at the same time in the same city. The FSB is the body created by the G20 in 2009, after the subprime crisis, to coordinate the world's banking and financial regulators. It reports to the G20 and not to the G7, and the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has chaired it since 2025.

On October 8, Bailey sent a letter to the G20 finance ministers, who were also gathered in Bangkok this week. He made stablecoins << a key focus >> for the FSB this year. A note on the cross-border vulnerabilities of stablecoins has accompanied it since October 12. The issue indeed exists, but it is progressing along the G20 path. The G7 did not find it useful to take it up.

The FSB's figures give a measure of the subject. The market weighs about 300 billion dollars by mid-2026, a stable amount over a year. The dollar backs 99% of this value. Stablecoins primarily serve as an entry and exit point for crypto markets, and in some emerging countries as a substitute store of value. The diagnosis is less flattering than the figures. Cooperation among regulators << is still in its infancy >>, writes Bailey. Some issuers << choose to set up in lightly or unregulated jurisdictions >>. And national frameworks << remain untested in severe stress or insolvency situations >>.

The Three FSB Projects on Stablecoins

The note points to a specific case, that of stablecoins with multiple issuers. Several affiliated entities then respond to the same token with separate reserves. In the event of panic, the demand for redemption can focus on just one of them, with no one knowing who owes what. The FSB therefore announces three projects: monitoring indicators for cross-border flows, better information sharing among authorities, and work on managing an issuer's bankruptcy. The G7 had promised stricter crypto regulation as early as 2023. Since then, the baton has passed to the FSB and the G20, under U.S. presidency this year.

The FSB published the final version of its best practices for the adoption of AI in finance on October 15, and Bailey has requested that the subject remain on the agenda in 2027. For stablecoins, the three projects do not yet have a date. The FSB's note reminds that authorities still depend on private data compilers to measure a 300 billion dollar market.

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