Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, sharply criticized crypto and stablecoins while praising the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
Speaking at the 2026 Midwest Economic Outlook summit on Thursday, Kashkari contrasted AI’s growing adoption with what he described as crypto’s limited utility. He said cryptocurrencies have “been around for more than a decade” and are “utterly useless,” adding that stablecoins similarly lack meaningful real-world applications.
By contrast, he pointed to AI’s swift integration into daily life. “AI has not been around very long, and people are using it every day,” Kashkari said, arguing that this demonstrates AI’s genuine, long-term potential for the US economy — unlike crypto.
Neel Kashkari dismissed much of the crypto industry’s messaging around stablecoins as little more than “a buzzword salad.”
“I always ask people: What can I do with a stablecoin that I can’t do with Venmo today?” he said. “I could send any one of you $5 with Venmo, or PayPal, or Zelle — so what is it that this magical stablecoin can do? Then I get a buzzword salad answer — blah blah blah, tokenized deposits.”
Kashkari also pushed back on the argument that stablecoins are especially useful for remittances. He noted that such use cases primarily benefit people outside the US and questioned whether the cost savings are as significant as proponents claim.
Using the example of his father-in-law in the Philippines, Kashkari said that while stablecoins could be received quickly, they would still need to be converted into local currency — a process that involves fees before the funds can be spent.
“If everybody in the world uses the same currency or the same payment platform, all these frictions go away,” he said. “But all these other countries are not going to abandon their own monetary policy [for stablecoins].”
He concluded by urging people to scrutinize crypto-related claims more carefully: “When it comes to anything about crypto or stablecoins, ask the most basic questions and don’t settle for word salad nonsense answers.”
