  Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies are on the horizon in Asia,
and in some cases have already arrived. This paper provides new analysis and a
critique of the use case for both forms of digital currency. It provides
time-varying estimates of devaluation risk for the leading stablecoin, Tether,
using data from the futures market. It describes the formidable obstacles to
widespread use of central bank digital currencies in cross-border transactions,
the context in which their utility is arguably greatest. The bottom line is
that significant uncertainties continue to dog the region's digital currency
initiatives.
