Dealer-dealers regulated by the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) can deal with their stablecoin holdings as regulatory capital, based on a tweak this week to a frequently-asked-questions doc maintained by the company.
That is a seismic shift supplied within the type of a minor addition to the SEC’s “Dealer Seller Monetary Obligations” FAQ. It is on-brand for a regulator that has made a gradual collection of adjustments to its crypto method by means of casual steering, business correspondence and workers statements ever since its Crypto Activity Drive started work through the administration of President Donald Trump.
On this case, a brand new query No. 5 was added about what sort of “haircut” a agency ought to tackle its holdings of stablecoins — the dollar-tied tokens corresponding to Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT. The reply was 2%, which means that as an alternative of the earlier understanding that such belongings weren’t thought-about measurable in opposition to a broker-dealer’s capital tally (100% haircut), the corporations will be capable to depend 98% of these holdings.
“Whereas this steering doesn’t create new guidelines, it helps cut back uncertainty for corporations looking for to function compliantly below present securities legal guidelines,” stated Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber.
This places stablecoins on the identical footing as different monetary merchandise.
“Which means stablecoins at the moment are handled like cash market funds on a agency’s steadiness sheet,” Tonya Evans, a former professor who now runs a crypto schooling enterprise and is on the board of administrators at Digital Forex Group, wrote in a publish on social media web site X. “Till at the moment, some broker-dealers have been zeroing out stablecoin holdings of their capital calculations. Holding them was a monetary penalty. That’s over.”
Earlier than, the extra stringent SEC limits meant these firms — corporations registered with the SEC to deal with clients’ securities transactions and in addition commerce in securities on their very own behalf — weren’t simply capable of custody tokenized securities or act as a go-between for buying and selling. Now the corporations that observe this steer from the company will be capable to extra simply present liquidity, support settlement and advance tokenized finance.
“In every single place from Robinhood to Goldman Sachs run on these calculations,” Larry Florio, deputy basic counsel at Ethena Labs, wrote in an explainer posted on LinkedIn. Stablecoins at the moment are working capital, he stated.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce runs the company’s activity power and issued a press release on the change, contending that utilizing stablecoins “will make it possible for broker-dealers to have interaction in a broader vary of enterprise actions referring to tokenized securities and different crypto belongings.” And he or she stated she needs to contemplate how the prevailing SEC guidelines “may very well be amended to account for fee stablecoins.”
That is the disadvantage of casual workers insurance policies — they’re as straightforward to reverse as they have been to problem, and so they do not carry the burden (and authorized protections) of a rule.
The SEC has been engaged on some crypto guidelines in latest months, however they have not but been produced, and the method often takes a number of months — typically years. Even a proper rule can nonetheless be reversed by a brand new management on the company, which is why crypto advocates are pushing for extra laws from Congress that will set the federal government’s digital belongings method into regulation, corresponding to final yr’s Guiding and Establishing Nationwide Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
UPDATE (February 20, 2026, 22:23 UTC): Provides remark from Digital Chamber CEO.
