Building block 18: Fostering the soundness of global stablecoin arrangements for cross-border payments

Building block 18: Fostering the soundness of global stablecoin arrangements for cross-border payments

Developments in the crypto market have shown the importance of global cooperation between central banks, relevant authorities and a wide range of stakeholders in developing international guidance, while it is for individual jurisdictions to develop laws, regulations and rules to give effect to these principles. Authorities should have robust, unified processes to help oversee international standards in this field.

Objective

With the emergence of stablecoins, the international regulatory community has sought to further understand these new entrants and the potential risks they may pose to the financial system, as well as the potential role of well-designed global stablecoin arrangements (SAs) in improving global cross-border payments. As such, they have called upon the standard-setting bodies to make any revisions to standards and principles or provide further guidance supplementing existing standards and principles, as needed.

Progress

In July 2022, the CPMI and IOSCO published the final guidance on the application of the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI) to SAs and confirmed that the PFMI apply to systemically important SAs that perform the transfer function.
In October 2021, the FATF updated its 2019 Guidance for a risk-based approach to Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs). A targeted update on implementation was published in July 2022. The application of FATF Standards to stablecoins is one of six focus areas of the updated guidance.
In May 2022, the BCBS issued a second consultation paper on the prudential treatment of banks' crypto exposures. Highlighting the importance of a global minimum prudential framework to mitigate risks from cryptoassets, the consultation paper is considering issues related to, among others, unbacked cryptoassets and stablecoins.
Following the adoption of the FSB report and high-level recommendations on the regulation, supervision and oversight of global SAs in 2020, a progress report was issued in October 2021, with a stocktake of the implementation of the FSB high-level recommendations across jurisdictions. In October 2022, the FSB published a consultation report on the review of the FSB high-level recommendations.