CRYPTO MARKET JUST SECURED ITS BIGGEST WIN OF 2026
The #SEC has changed the rules, which forced Wall Street to need $2 million in capital to hold $1 million in stablecoins.
TradFi broker dealers must follow capital rules. When they hold an asset, they must set aside capital based on how risky regulators think that asset is.
#Stablecoins were being treated with a 100% haircut. That means if a broker dealer held $1M in stablecoins, regulators treated that entire $1M as unusable for capital purposes. To stay compliant, the firm effectively had to keep another $1M of its own capital locked up.
So holding $1M in stablecoins locked up about $2M of balance sheet capacity. That made stablecoins inefficient and unattractive for regulated institutions.
Now, the SEC clarified the haircut should be 2%, similar to money market funds.
Now firms only need to set aside a small buffer instead of freezing the full amount. This is a major shift.
Broker dealers can now hold stablecoins without damaging their capital ratios.
They can use stablecoins for settlement, collateral transfers, tokenized treasuries, and other on chain transactions without a massive capital penalty.
And this is where crypto benefits.
If stablecoins are balance sheet friendly, institutions can actually integrate them into daily operations. More usage means more demand.
More demand strengthens the role of stablecoins as core financial infrastructure. Stablecoins are the bridge between traditional finance and crypto markets.
Wall Street can hold and use them efficiently, adoption accelerates. And it'll lower the biggest barrier that was keeping stablecoins out of institutional finance.
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