The ECB and the European System of Central Banks said on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, that MiCA’s mandatory stablecoin bank-deposit rule should be dropped. They want liquidity floors instead.
The Brief
- The ESCB wants to scrap the rule requiring stablecoin issuers to hold at least 30% of reserves, or 60% for significant tokens, as bank deposits.
- The replacement would set minimum shares of assets maturing within one and five working days.
- The paper points to the March 2023 run on USDC after Silicon Valley Bank ran into trouble, a token issued by Circle.
- It also shares the ESRB’s concerns about third-country multi-issuer stablecoin schemes.
- The US Senate failed last week to advance the Clarity Act, according to Reuters.
Liquidity buckets instead of a deposit floor
The ESCB wants reserve rules built around how fast assets mature, not where they sit. Under EU MiCA rules, issuers must hold at least 30% of reserve assets as bank deposits. That share rises to at least 60% for significant tokens.
The ESCB includes all 27 national central banks of EU countries. Its response to Brussels says the floor should go.
Calibration could use the European Banking Authority’s draft technical standards as a minimum starting point. That draft requires the daily bucket to be at least 40% for significant stablecoins and 20% for non-significant tokens. It requires the weekly bucket to be at least 60% for significant tokens and 30% for non-significant ones.
Those weekly floors match the current deposit shares exactly. If Brussels adopts them, the shift looks less like a loosening. It would mainly change where the reserves sit.
The ESCB said the deposit rule cuts issuer profitability, citing an average corporate deposit yield of 0.53% in April 2026 as a proxy.
The paper lists alternatives. Issuers could invest reserves in overnight reverse repos or buy short-term sovereign bonds. It says adequate profitability is needed for a competitive euro-denominated stablecoin market.
Why central banks worry about bank funding?
The ESCB said the rule ties issuers and banks too closely. “stablecoins can alter banks’ funding structures by replacing relatively stable retail deposits with deposits from stablecoin issuers, which tend to be less stable and more sensitive to market conditions,” the paper said.
Banks already treat that money as flighty. Deposits received from stablecoin issuers are subject to a 100% outflow rate under the liquidity coverage ratio.
The paper cites a past episode as proof of that risk.
In March 2023, difficulties at Silicon Valley Bank led to a run on USDC. Circle, the USDC issuer, held part of its reserves in uninsured deposits at SVB. The risk runs both ways. A bank failure can break a peg, and a large issuer withdrawal can strain a bank.
Circle has separately warned about MiCA’s overlap with EU payment rules.
Multi-issuance and enforcement gaps
The ESCB wants to keep the prohibition on paying interest on stablecoins.
The paper takes a hard line on multi-issuer schemes.
EU reserve assets could be used to meet redemption requests from holders of tokens issued outside the EU. In a run, EU issuers may not have enough reserve assets to meet redemptions from both EU and non-EU holders. Co-issuers might market a stablecoin as MiCAR-compliant while holding only a small share of reserves in the EU.
If such schemes are permitted, MiCAR would need a comprehensive framework of safeguards, including an EU-level assessment of third-country equivalence.
That fight is live in Paris too, where the Bank of France has pressed its own MiCA stablecoin concerns.
On enforcement, the ESCB said authorities face material challenges in enforcing MiCAR while non-compliant crypto assets remain accessible in the EU. The ECB has welcomed a Commission plan to transfer authorisation, monitoring and enforcement powers for CASPs to ESMA.
That comes after a June deadline for crypto firms to secure an EU licence or wind down in the bloc. Across the Atlantic, the US signed a stablecoin law last year, but its wider crypto bill has stalled.
The deposit floor was a direct wire from MiCA into bank balance sheets. Swapping it for liquidity buckets keeps redemption cash on hand while cutting that line. The next test is whether the Commission writes the EBA’s draft floors into the law itself.
