Broker-dealers regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can treat their stablecoin holdings as regulatory capital, according to a tweak this week to a frequently asked questions document maintained by the agency.
It’s a seismic shift offered in the form of a minor addition to the SEC’s “Broker Dealer Financial Responsibilities” FAQ. That’s on-brand for a regulator that has made a steady stream of changes to its crypto approach through informal guidance, industry correspondence and staff statements ever since its Crypto Task Force began work under President Donald Trump’s administration.
In this case, a new question #5 was added about what kind of “haircut” a company should take on its holdings of stablecoins – the dollar-pegged tokens such as Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT. The answer was 2%, meaning that instead of the previous understanding that such assets were not considered measurable against a broker-dealer’s capital statement (100% haircut), firms will be able to count 98% of these holdings.
“While this guidance does not create new rules, it helps reduce uncertainty for companies seeking to operate in compliance with applicable securities laws,” said Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber.
This puts stablecoins on the same footing as other financial products.
“This means that stablecoins are now treated as money market funds on a company’s balance sheet,” wrote Tonya Evans, a former professor who now runs a crypto education company and is on the board of the Digital Currency Group, in a post on social media X. “Until today, some brokers and dealers were zeroing out stablecoin holdings against their capital holdings.”
Before, the stricter SEC limits meant that those firms—firms registered with the SEC to handle clients’ securities transactions and also trade securities on their own behalf—were not easily able to hold tokenized securities or act as intermediaries for trading. Now, the companies that follow this direction from the agency will be able to more easily provide liquidity, help with settlement and promote tokenized financing.
“Everywhere from Robinhood to Goldman Sachs runs on these calculations,” wrote Larry Florio, deputy general counsel at Athena Labs, in an explanation on LinkedIn. Stablecoins are now working capital, he said.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who leads the agency’s task force, issued a statement about the change, arguing that the use of stablecoins “will enable broker-dealers to engage in a broader range of business activities related to tokenized securities and other cryptoassets.” And she said she wants to consider how the existing SEC rules “could be modified to accommodate payment stack coins.”
That’s the downside of informal personnel policies—they’re as easy to reverse as they were to issue, and they don’t carry the weight (and legal protections) of a rule.
The SEC has been working on some crypto rules in recent months, but they have yet to be produced, and the process usually takes several months – sometimes years. Even a formal rule can still be overturned by new leadership at the agency, which is why crypto advocates are pushing for more legislation from Congress that would enact the government’s digital assets approach, such as last year’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
UPDATE (February 20, 2026, 22:23 UTC): Adding comment from Digital Chamber CEO.
