SEC staff have issued an FAQ for broker-dealers, supporting a 2% haircut on proprietary stablecoin positions when calculating net capital under Rule 15c3-1. The move clears the way for broker-dealers to hold stablecoins as working capital for tokenized securities settlement.
The FAQ, published by the Division of Trading and Markets, grants payment stablecoins “ready market” status under the rule, a threshold determination that matters enormously, since assets without a ready market face a 100% haircut, effectively excluding them from allowable capital entirely.
The staff will not object if a broker-dealer treats a proprietary position in payment stablecoin as having a “ready market” under Rule 15c3-1, and takes a haircut of 2% of the market value of the greater of the long or short proprietary position in payment stablecoin in calculating its net capital.
Not every stablecoin makes the cut. Before the GENIUS Act takes effect, a stablecoin must be issued by a state-regulated money transmitter, state trust company, or national trust bank; hold reserves meeting the Act’s requirements; publicly disclose its redemption policy; and publish monthly attestation reports from a registered public accounting firm. In practice, that screens out Tether.
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