SEC Hands Crypto 'Most Important Win of the Year'

Hester Peirce, commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said the regulator would not object if broker-dealers hold less capital against payment stablecoins.

Peirce said in a statement on 19 February 2026 that staff had issued an FAQ relating to the treatment of payment stablecoins under the broker-dealer net capital rule (Exchange Act Rule 15c3-1).

"The FAQ provides that the staff would not object if a broker-dealer were to apply a 2% haircut on proprietary positions in a payment stablecoin when calculating its net capital," she added.

Peirce said FAQs shed light on the staff's thinking about emerging issues but that at the Commission level, she would like to consider how Rule 15c3-1 could be amended to account for payment stablecoins.

JP Richardson, chief executive of exodus, which creates non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets and was the public company in the US to tokenize stocks on the blockchain, said:

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, the digital asset ETF issuer, said:

Frank Head of Cyprx Research Lab, said the change is "not technical, it's transformative" and the 2% haircut is the same as for money market funds, holding cash or U.S. treasuries:

"The economics shift materially:

$200M stablecoin inventory

– 100% haircut: $200M capital deduction

– 2% haircut: $4M deduction

That delta flows directly into leverage capacity, trading volume, and ROE.

In practical terms:

Stablecoins move from "capital punitive" to "capital viable" on regulated balance sheets.

If broker-dealers can efficiently hold the settlement asset, tokenized securities markets can scale.

This is less about crypto more about market structure modernization."

BitGo, the federally chartered digital asset bank, said:

Virginie O'Shea, founder of Firebrand Research, noted:

Christopher Perkins, president at Coinfund, said: