Yesha Yadav is a professor of law, the Milton R. Underwood Chair, the Associate Dean &amp; Robert Belton Director of Culture &amp; Community, and the Co-Faculty Director, Master of Laws (LL.M) Program at the Vanderbilt University Law School. Chris Odinet is a professor of law, Mosbacher Research Fellow, and Affiliate Professor of Finance at Texas A&amp;M University School of Law. Andrea Tosato is professor of law at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. Yesha, Chris, and Andrea join the show to discuss their avenues into stablecoin regulation, their four-part definition of moneyness (nature of the claim, safety, discharge capacity, and negotiability), how Tether and Circle stack up to these definitions, the stablecoin bankruptcy conundrum, the progress the GENIUS Act made on closing legal loopholes, their prescriptions for policymakers, and much more. Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the transcript for this week&#x27;s episode, now with links. Recorded on May 20th, 2026 Subscribe to David&#x27;s Substack: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus Follow David on X: @DavidBeckworth Follow Chris on X: @ChisOdinet Follow Andrea on X: @Andrea_Tosato Follow the show on X: @Macro_Musings Check out our Macro Musings merch! Timestamps 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:26 - Career Backgrounds of Chris, Yesha, and Andrea 00:02:35 - Background on the Paper 00:06:52 - Structure of Money 00:17:33 - Moneyness: Nature of the Claim 00:22:37 - Moneyness: Safety 00:23:45 - Moneyness: Discharge Capacity 00:30:50 - Moneyness: Negotiability 00:31:55 - How Stablecoins Currently Hold Up in Moneyness 00:58:18 - Recommendations to Policymakers 01:10:51 - Outro

Yesha Yadav, Chris Odinet, and Andrea Tosato on the Moneyness of Stablecoins

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Macro Musings with David Beckworth

## Participants

- **David Beckworth** (Mercatus Center at George Mason University)
- **Chris Odinet** (Texas A&M University School of Law)
- **Andrea Tosato** (SMU Dedman School of Law)
- **Yesha Yadav** (Vanderbilt University Law School)

## Transcript

Welcome to Macro Musings, where each week we pull back the curtain and take a closer look at the most important macroeconomic issues of the past, present, and future. I am your host, David Beckworth, a Senior Research Fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and I'm glad you decided to join us. Our guests today are Chris Odinet, Andrea Tosato, and Yesha Yadav.

They have a new paper titled The Moneyness of Stablecoins, where they argue that the key distinction and question about stablecoins is not merely whether they are backed or technically efficient, but whether they are actually money-like in a legal and institutional sense. The authors develop a framework they call moneyness, the degree to which an instrument functions like money. Their central claim is that moneyness is not just an economic property, it is fundamentally a legal and institutional construction.

They argue that stablecoins currently fall short of true moneyness, even after the Genius Act, because there are still legal hurdles to be cleared. Welcome to the show, everyone. David, thank you for having us. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. Well, it's great to have you on. It was a great paper, very topical. And we need legal scholars like you working on this issue because it's more than economics, right? It's more than finance. That's a key point of your paper. But before we get into it, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself, starting with you, Chris?

Sure. Happy to. And I'm delighted to be here. I've been a longtime fan of the podcast. So my name is Chris Odinet. I'm on the faculty at Texas A&M University's Law School. I teach property law, commercial finance, bankruptcy, and I teach a class called Consumer Banking. David, thanks so much for having us again. And just to echo Chris, huge fan of yours and the podcast for bringing so much insight to the world. So thank you for doing that. I am a market structure nerd across the board.

So QRG's markets, digital assets, payments, and obviously, as we've discussed before in the case of treasuries. And again, I joined my co-authors and being delighted to be here. Big fan of the pod. I'm Andrea Tosato. I'm a professor of law at SMU Dedman School of Law. And I am fascinated by private law, commercial law, and in particular, the legal framework for digital assets. And from there, the road to stable coins is short. Well, I should mention to the listeners and watchers of the video that Yesha and I are neighbors in Nashville. We are.

But we haven't had a tea yet. We have not met up. We have to correct that. Yes. But I've been down to Vanderbilt a few times. You've been on...

Yesha Yadav, Chris Odinet, and Andrea Tosato on the Moneyness of Stablecoins

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Yesha Yadav, Chris Odinet, and Andrea Tosato on the Moneyness of Stablecoins

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.