February 24, 2026
By Our Correspondent
America’s securities watchdog inches stablecoins closer to the financial mainstream
America’s broker-dealers have been given a small but significant concession. Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have clarified that firms may apply a 2% “haircut” to certain dollar-pegged stablecoins for net capital purposes—rather than the punitive 100% discount some feared.
The guidance, published by the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets in a set of frequently asked questions on crypto-asset activities, addresses a technical but consequential uncertainty. Broker-dealers are required to maintain minimum levels of net capital to cushion against market volatility and counterparty risk. Assets deemed risky are subject to “haircuts”, reducing the value that can be counted towards those requirements.
Until now, ambiguity over how to treat payment stablecoins left firms in a bind. A 100% haircut—effectively treating such tokens as worthless for capital purposes—would have made holding them prohibitively expensive. By contrast, a 2% haircut allows a broker-dealer with $100m in eligible stablecoins to count $98m towards its regulatory capital.
Hester Peirce, an SEC commissioner long sympathetic to crypto markets, welcomed the clarification. Given the reserve assets backing payment stablecoins, she argued, a full haircut would have been “unduly punitive”.
For crypto-native observers, the shift is less about percentages than precedent. Stablecoins are the plumbing of on-chain finance: settlement assets for tokenised securities, collateral for decentralised markets and the grease for exchange liquidity. If broker-dealers were effectively barred from holding them, the integration of traditional finance with blockchain rails would have stalled.
The new stance stops short of full endorsement. It does not anoint stablecoins as cash equivalents in law, nor does it resolve broader regulatory questions around issuance, redemption rights or systemic risk. But by permitting treatment akin to low-risk cash instruments—closer in spirit to money-market funds than to speculative tokens—the SEC staff have reduced a major friction point.
Marc Baumann, chief executive of crypto-intelligence firm 51, called the move “a big deal”, noting that Wall Street can now hold and deploy stablecoins without wrecking capital ratios. That may be overstated. The guidance is technical, issued by staff rather than the commission itself, and limited in scope.
Still, in a regulatory environment often defined by enforcement first and clarity later, even incremental accommodation matters. A 2% haircut may seem trivial. In capital markets, it can be the difference between participation and abstention.
