The US Securities and Change Fee (SEC) workers final week clarified that broker-dealers can apply a 2% “haircut” to their stablecoin holdings with out objection from the SEC.
Beforehand, broker-dealers had been unsure whether or not to use a 100% haircut to their dollar-pegged stablecoins, that means that they didn’t rely the tokens towards their internet capital beneath present rules.
The clarification got here within the type of a posting by the workers of the SEC’s Division of Buying and selling and Markets as a “Regularly Requested Questions Referring to Crypto Asset Actions and Distributed Ledger Expertise.”
In response, Commissioner Hester Peirce stated: In my opinion, a 100% haircut can be unnecessarily punitive given the underlying reserve property that again fee stablecoins.”
The SEC requires broker-dealers to take care of minimal ranges of internet capital to fulfill monetary obligations and take in potential losses from market downturns and volatility, in accordance to the workers’s clarification.
For instance, if a broker-dealer holds $100 million in stablecoins, a 2% haircut permits them to rely $98 million towards their internet capital necessities. Celebrating the clarification as constructive for the monetary system, Peirce stated:
“Stablecoins are important to transacting on blockchain rails. 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 property.”
The clarification means broker-dealers can maintain stablecoins with out worrying about extra internet capital necessities, and may deal with the tokens equally to cash market funds, automobiles that maintain low-risk money equivalents like US Treasurys and certificates of deposit.
In a social media publish over the weekend, Marc Baumann, CEO of crypto intelligence firm 51, known as the SEC workers communication “an enormous deal,” including that “Wall Avenue can now truly maintain and use stablecoins with out destroying their capital ratios.”
Associated: SEC leaders search to make clear how tokenized securities work together with present regulation
Stablecoins achieve traction in america, however not all US officers are satisfied
The stablecoin market cap just lately hit a snag, falling by about $6 billion from the December 2025 peak of over $300 billion.
Nonetheless, the market nonetheless has a $295 billion market cap, which has steadily grown since 2023, in response to information from RWA.XYZ.
United States President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS stablecoin invoice into regulation in July 2025, which was thought-about a landmark second for the crypto business.
The stablecoin market capitalization was simply north of $252 billion on the time of signing and surged following the passage of the invoice, in response to information from RWA.XYZ.
Regardless of the meteoric surge in stablecoins and their implications for US greenback dominance in international monetary markets, Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Financial institution of Minneapolis, maintains that stablecoins and crypto haven’t any actual use instances.
“I may ship any one among you $5 with Venmo, or PayPal, or Zelle, so what’s it that this magical stablecoin can do? ” he stated on Thursday.
Journal: How crypto legal guidelines modified in 2025 — and the way they’ll change in 2026
