Today the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published updates to crypto-asset rules for bank compliance. It also released the final disclosure framework. The changes to the rules appear relatively minor, compared to earlier plans. In the latest consultation, the Committee threatened to treat traditional digital securities on public blockchains as having the equivalent risk as cryptocurrencies. This would block banks from participating in tokenization initiatives on public blockchains because they would be prohibitively expensive. However, the changes don’t mention permissionless blockchains at all, which is good news for bank tokenization efforts.
Likewise, two of the biggest proposed changes on stablecoins have been dropped from the final changes. The consultation suggested all stablecoin reserves have to be in a bankruptcy remote vehicle. That’s problematic for stablecoin reserves held in bank accounts, and Europe’s MiCA regulations require a high proportion of reserves are kept at banks. The final Basel rules provide an exception for bank balances.
The Basel Committee also considered banning the use of securities finance transactions such as repos and reverse repos in stablecoin reserves. While the Basel announcement says reverse repo is allowed subject to limitations, it’s not very clear cut and looks like it’s at the discretion of national regulators.
Meanwhile, the Committee previously postponed the implementation of the rules to January 2026.
