Regulators around the world have been thinking seriously about the risks associated with stablecoins since 2019 but recently, concerns have intensi
Regulators around the world have been thinking seriously about the risks associated with stablecoins since 2019 but recently, concerns have intensified, particularly in the United States.
In November, the United States’ President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, or PWG, issued a key report, raising questions about possible “stablecoin runs” as well as “payment system risk.” The U.S Senate followed up in December with hearings on stablecoin risks.
It raises questions: Is stablecoin regulation coming to the U.S. in 2022? If so, will it be “broad stroke” federal legislation or more piecemeal Treasury Department regulation? What impact might it have on non-bank stablecoin issuers and the crypto industry in general? Could it spur a sort of convergence where stablecoin issuers become more like high-tech banks?
We are “almost certain” to see federal regulation of stablecoins in 2022, Douglas Landy, partner at White & Case, told Cointelegraph. Rohan Grey, an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, agreed. “Yes, stablecoin regulation is coming, and it’s going to be a dual push” marked by a growing impetus for comprehensive federal legislation, but also pressure on Treasury and related federal agencies to become more active.
Others, however, say not so fast. “I think the prospect of legislation is unlikely before 2023 at least,” Salman Banaei, head of policy at cryptocurrency intelligence firm Chainalysis, told Cointelegraph. As a result “the regulatory cloud looming over the stablecoin markets will remain with us for a while.”
That said, the hearings and draft bills that Banaei expects to see in 2022 should “lay the groundwork for what could be a productive 2023.”
Temperature is rising
Most agree that regulatory pressure is building — and not just in the U.S. “Other countries are reacting to the same underlying forces,” Grey told Cointelegraph. The initial catalyst was Facebook’s 2019 Libra (now Diem) announcement that it aimed to develop its own global currency— a wake-up call for policymakers — making it clear “that they could not stay on the sidelines” even if the crypto sector was (then) “a small, somewhat quaint industry” that posed no “systemic risk,” Grey explained.
Today, there are three main factors that are propelling stablecoin regulation forward, Banaei told Cointelegraph. The first is collateralization, or the concern, also articulated in the PWG report, that, according to Banaei:
“Some stablecoins are providing a misleading picture of the assets underpinning them in their disclosures. This could lead to holders of these digital assets waking up to a seriously devalued stake as a function of a repricing and possibly a run.”
The second worry is that stablecoins “are fueling speculation in what is perceived as a dangerous unregulated ecosystem, such as DeFi applications that have yet to be subjected to legislation as other digital assets have,” continued Banaei. Meanwhile, the third concern is “that stablecoins could become legitimate competitors to standard payment networks,” benefitting from regulatory arbitrage so that one day they may provide “broadly scalable payments solutions that could undermine traditional payments and banking service providers.”
To Banaei’s second point, Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University, told the Senate in December that stablecoins today aren’t being used to make payments for real-world goods and services, as some suppose, but rather their primary use “is to support the DeFi ecosystem […] a type of shadow banking system with fragilities that could […] disrupt our real economy.”
Grey added: “The industry got bigger, stablecoins got more important and stablecoins’ positive spin got tarnished.” Serious questions were raised in the past year about industry leader Tether’s (USDT) reserve assets but later, even more compliant seemingly well-intentioned issuers proved misleading with regard to reserves. Circle, the primary issuer of USD Coin (USDC), for instance, had claimed that its stablecoin “was backed 1:1 by cashlike holdings” but then it came out that “40 percent of its holdings were actually in U.S. Treasurys, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, corporate bonds and municipal debt,” as the New York Times pointed out.
In the past three months, a kind of “public hype has entered a new level,” continued Grey, including celebrities promoting crypto assets and nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. All these things nudged regulators further along.
Regulation by FSOC?
“2022 is probably too early for comprehensive federal stablecoin legislation or regulation,” Jai Massari, partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, told Cointelegraph. For one thing, it’s a midterm election year in the U.S., but “I think we’ll see a lot of proposals, which are important to form a baseline for what stablecoin regulation could be,” she told…
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