Thirty-seven banks. Fifteen countries. One quote that explains everything.
Today CoinDesk reported that Qivalis, a European bank consortium building a euro-backed stablecoin, has tripled its membership to 37 financial institutions across 15 countries. ABN AMRO, Rabobank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Nordea…real names, serious capital. They are targeting a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin launch in the second half of 2026.
And yet, buried in the article is the quote and attribution that tells you everything you need to know about why this effort is likely to disappoint.
“This infrastructure is essential if Europe is to compete in the global digital economy whilst preserving its strategic autonomy.”
— Howard Davies, Chairman of the Qivalis Supervisory Board
Strategic autonomy. That is the stated goal. Not speed-to-market. Not customer demand. Not solving a specific payment problem better than USDT or USDC. Strategic. Autonomy.
And the statement comes from the Head of the Supervisory Board of Qivalis, a Foundation governed by the consortium of the 37 banks who each get to appoint representation. Not a CEO in a race to bring together complex elements that fit within guidelines and rules to a marketplace unaccustomed to this solution but who are looking for better than what banks have given them for decades. Nope. It’s from the Head of the Supervisory Board of the Foundation of a Consortium of 37 Banks.
This Euro-stable project is not a product thesis. It’s a geopolitical one. And products built on geopolitical theses, rather than on user needs and product market fit, tend to fail in the market even when they succeed in the boardroom.
How Things Actually Get Built
USDC was built as one of the products that Jeremy Allaire and the early team at Circle had about moving money at internet speed. The company almost went bust on a few earlier products such as Circle Pay and Circle Invest. But through singular, pig-headed determination and execution the team at Circle created a product with incredible product market fit then spent years navigating ambiguous and often contrary global regulations. It worked. USDC isn’t at $77 Billion of circulation because of regulatory elegance. Its because the product is extremely useful around the globe. It settled USD value faster, moved cheaper, and integrated into existing fintech stacks with a few lines of code.
Tether is even starker. Tether’s USDT was not launched with the blessing of a central bank. It was scrappy, legally murky for years, and run by a small team out of the British Virgin Islands. Today it accounts for roughly 70% of the global stablecoin market and processes more daily volume than PayPal. It won because it solved a real liquidity problem for crypto traders and emerging market users who needed dollar exposure without a US bank account.
The US fintech playbook (build something useful, grow fast, regulate later) has produced Stripe, Coinbase, Circle, Brex, Chime, and Robinhood. Each one identified a friction point, built the minimum viable solution, got users, and scaled. The regulatory conversation came second.
The European Approach: Compliance Before Product
Europe’s MiCA framework took effect in 2024. It has inhibited the growth of a Euro-stablecoin ecosystem thus far. It provides clear rules for stablecoin issuers such as reserve requirements, redemption rights, and audit standards. So if you want to build a regulated euro stablecoin that institutional investors can hold without legal anxiety, MiCA is the current legal rulebook.
Qivalis has built the regulatory wrapper. They have 37 member banks, a supervisory board, an EMI license application with the Dutch central bank, and a launch target; but they do not have a product that end users want. Qivalis is working to please the regulators and forgetting about potential customers and use cases. And if you really want to disrupt and update the system, that requires a significantly better product; not a consortium with better governance.
The Scoreboard
The US approach to fintech, build fast, find users, scale, then negotiate with regulators, has produced most of the infrastructure that global finance now runs on. The US approach and system rewards speed and punishes over-engineering.
The European approach produces beautifully governed, thoroughly compliant, occasionally used products. PSD2 was supposed to transform European banking. It mostly produced a lot of API documentation. The digital euro project has been in development for four years and counting.
Qivalis may well launch a technically compliant, well-governed euro stablecoin by the end of 2026. What it is unlikely to produce is a euro stablecoin that anyone outside of mandated institutional use cases actually chooses to hold.
Preserving strategic autonomy and building a product people want are not the same goal. In fintech, only one of them produces a winner.
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