SEC allows broker-dealers to take 2% ‘haircut’ on stablecoins

Staff said the US regulator would “not object” to broker-dealers counting stablecoin holdings toward their net capital requirements.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff last week clarified that broker-dealers can apply a 2% “haircut” to their stablecoin holdings without objection from the SEC.

Previously, broker-dealers were uncertain whether to apply a 100% haircut to their dollar-pegged stablecoins, meaning that they did not count the tokens toward their net capital under existing regulations.

The clarification came in the form of a posting by the staff of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets as a “Frequently Asked Questions Relating to Crypto Asset Activities and Distributed Ledger Technology.”

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