The Bank of England has released its consultation on systemic stablecoins, seeking feedback by 10 February 2026. Regulations will come into force in the second half of next year. One crucial point was buried deep in the consultation paper: the Bank does not consider that the risks of permissionless blockchains are capable of being addressed at the moment. Here’s the key clause:
“We remain open to the use of public permissionless ledgers, but we maintain our view as set out in the discussion paper that public permissionless ledgers currently do not provide a clear locus of accountability and could result in heightened risks around operational resilience (including cybersecurity) and settlement finality. We want to continue working with industry to understand these risks and potential mitigants better.”
While that sounds problematic, it’s less so when one looks at what the Bank deems to be a systemic stablecoin. It doesn’t give prescriptive figures for users or issuance, but is more focused on a large retailer or tech firm launching a stablecoin for everyday payments. In other words, a mainstream organization with an existing massive network of users. A stablecoin issuer such as Circle starting to use UK stablecoins for retail and cross border payments is less likely to be considered a systemic issuer according to an example in the consultation. The big question is whether this approach regarding permissionless DLTs will also be used for non-systemic stablecoins.
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