EU Central Banks Blame MiCA Rules for Stablecoin Bank Risks

The European System of Central Banks wants the rule that forces euro stablecoin issuers to keep at least 30% of reserves parked at commercial banks replaced with a test of how quickly those reserves could be turned into cash. For a holder, the change would swap a fixed share sitting in bank deposits for a rule about how fast the same reserves could reach the issuer. In a bank scare like the one USDC faced in March 2023, that means an issuer would rely less on the willingness of a single bank to hand deposits back and more on whether it could sell securities or unwind reverse repos within a working day.

That is the practical shape of the position Reuters and Cinco Días reported on Sept. 22, which the European Commission is now taking in as input to its review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. The consultation runs through Sept. 30, and the Commission has said the responses may inform a later legislative proposal.

What MiCA actually requires today

Under European Banking Authority technical standards, issuers of non-significant stablecoin tokens must hold at least 30% of reserves as deposits with EU credit institutions. The floor rises to 60% for tokens the EBA has classified as significant. That share is fixed in the rule, regardless of how quickly a bank could return the cash.

What the central banks want instead

The ESCB position would use existing EBA liquidity buckets. For non-significant tokens, at least 20% of reserves would need to be available within one working day, and 30% within five. For significant tokens, the thresholds rise to 40% within a day and 60% within five. Bank deposits would remain eligible, but they would compete with other instruments on speed rather than size.

What can count toward those buckets, under the EBA framework, includes withdrawable cash and reverse repurchase agreements that can be terminated within the relevant window, plus specified highly liquid financial instruments. Short maturity alone does not make an asset eligible.

The bank run the ECB keeps pointing to

The case the ECB has made for change leans on March 2023. Circle held part of USDC's reserves at Silicon Valley Bank, and uncertainty over access to those funds pressured the token's peg. USDC's market capitalization fell 26% over a month, according to an ECB analysis.

An ECB speech described how redemptions could force a stablecoin issuer to withdraw reserves and pressure a bank's liquidity. An ECB working paper added that issuers may concentrate their deposits among a small number of banks. Together the two pieces argue that the deposit floor is not a neutral rule. It pushes issuers toward bank balance sheets, and bank balance sheets back into the issuer's redemption pressure.

What the proposed safeguards look like

Draft safeguards cap an issuer's deposit at one systemically important bank at 25% of reserves and 1.5% of that bank's total assets. Qualifying securities and money-market instruments in the 0% reference-haircut category are capped at 35% of reserves when they come from one issuer.

For reserve valuation, the rules disapply the reference haircuts that sit on covered bonds and other assets and instead require overcollateralization to cover market-value risks. Core Level 1 sovereign and public-sector assets sit in a 0% reference-haircut category; extremely high-quality covered bonds carry a reference haircut of at least 7% before that disapplication.

Tether's view

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the reported ESCB position echoed Tether's warning about MiCA's mandatory bank-deposit share, arguing that concentrating reserves in commercial banks can transmit distress between an issuer and a lender. The company wound down its euro-backed EURT while calling for a more risk-averse framework. USDT remains outside the group of tokens issued under a MiCA authorization.

How big the euro stablecoin market actually is

Euro-denominated stablecoins had a market capitalization of about €450 million in January 2026, compared with roughly $300 billion for dollar-denominated tokens. The Commission is rewriting the rules for a market that, by that measure, is roughly 0.15% the size of its dollar counterpart.

What the ECB has not put on the public record in the reporting cited here is the full text of its submission, or whether the 30% and 60% deposit floors have moved since MiCA's 2024 entry into force. The consultation closes Sept. 30, and any legislative proposal would follow.