ECB pushes to ease MiCA's 60% bank-deposit rule for stablecoins
DeFi & Yields ·
The European Central Bank and national central banks across the EU are urging regulators to loosen a MiCA provision that forces stablecoin issuers to hold 60% of reserves in bank deposits.
Under the current framework, major stablecoin issuers must park at least 60% of their reserve assets in deposits at credit institutions, a rule designed to give banks a stable funding cushion tied to crypto reserves. The ECB and other EU central banks now argue that this mandate is counterproductive, warning that concentrating stablecoin reserves in bank deposits creates exactly the kind of flighty, redemption-sensitive cash that could destabilize lenders if holders rush to cash out. Instead, the central banks are advocating for a reserve mix weighted toward short-dated liquid assets, which they characterize as a safer buffer against sudden outflows than deposits that can be pulled on demand.
The push, reported by Reuters, reflects a broader tension within MiCA's stablecoin regime between protecting bank balance sheets and protecting the stability of the stablecoins themselves. The 60% threshold was written into the regulation partly to ensure banks retain a funding link to crypto reserves, but the central banks now contend that this same feature could amplify risk during a stress event, since large, fast redemptions of stablecoin deposits held at banks would mirror a classic deposit run rather than a more orderly drawdown of liquid instruments like short-term government securities.
The reserve-composition debate sits within a wider set of MiCA-related developments moving through the EU market. Regulators and firms have been navigating adjacent compliance issues, including national licensing actions and bank-linked stablecoin products launching under the MiCA regime, underscoring how the reserve rules interact with a rapidly expanding population of regulated euro- and dollar-denominated stablecoins.
What remains unresolved is whether EU lawmakers will formally amend the 60% threshold, and if so, what specific liquid-asset categories would be permitted and in what proportions. It is also unclear how quickly any change could move through the EU's legislative process, or whether stablecoin issuers already operating under the current deposit mandate would need to restructure existing reserve holdings once a revised standard takes effect.