This paper studies the international macro-financial implications of U.S. dollar-backed payment stablecoins. These digital assets create a new global safe asset channel that links private money creation and global payment needs directly to U.S. public debt. By reshaping the demand for safe assets and the geography of dollar intermediation, stablecoins transform the dynamics of global financial markets, generating new tradeoffs, also for the U.S.: even if they widen the dollar’s global footprint and compress U.S. risk-free yields, they entail non-trivial macro-financial costs. […]