FSB tells the G20 that stablecoin supervisors lean on private data and that no run has tested the rules

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has told G20 finance ministers and central bank governors that the authorities watching the roughly $300 billion stablecoin market rely mostly on data from private compilers, that they often cannot tell who holds the tokens or where, and that no global stablecoin has yet been tested by a severe run or an issuer insolvency. The FSB’s stablecoin findings sit in a five-page note dated 12 October 2026, “Global Stablecoin Arrangements: Cross-border vulnerabilities and financial stability monitoring”, which FSB Chair Andrew Bailey sent to the G20 ahead of its 15 October meeting in Bangkok.

The document drew little attention in crypto media when it came out twelve days ago. The French site Journal du Coin brought it back on Saturday 24 October, under a headline saying the FSB “monitors” $300 billion with private data. That is not quite what the note says. The $300 billion is the FSB’s estimate of the whole market, and the reliance on private data is described as a habit of “authorities” in general, the national supervisors and central banks that sit on the board, not of the FSB’s own staff. The note brings no new rule and no deadline.

What the FSB stablecoins note says about a $300 billion market

The figure comes on page two of the PDF. As of mid-2026, the FSB puts the total market value of stablecoins at around $300 billion, “essentially unchanged from a year earlier”, with 99% of that value pegged to the US dollar. By the board’s own count, then, the market did not grow in twelve months.

Stablecoins today are “predominantly” a source of liquidity to get into, out of and trade within crypto markets, the note says. In some emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs, in the FSB’s shorthand), they also work as an alternative store of value and can support financial inclusion. Faster, cheaper and more transparent payments, at home and across borders, are listed as a possible future benefit, and the note adds that some of those gains may come from the underlying technology, distributed ledgers and tokenisation, rather than from stablecoins as such.

No company is named anywhere in the text. It talks about “global stablecoins”, a category the FSB defined in 2023 as tokens with reach and use across several jurisdictions that could become systemically important in one or more of them.

Authorities lean on private data compilers they cannot fully check

The second half of the note deals with data, and this is where the Journal du Coin piece found its angle. Stablecoin activity “generates abundant data”, the FSB writes, yet several problems limit how well that data can be used to spot financial stability risks. The board had already flagged gaps in digital asset data, stablecoins included, in its October 2024 status report on the G20 crypto-asset roadmap.

“Authorities currently rely mostly on private compilers of stablecoin data that use a range of methods,” the note says on page four. Those specialised third parties use proprietary methods to compile, filter and aggregate figures from primary sources, and their methods vary in accuracy and in transparency. The FSB says this improves access to data while “creating comparability and credibility risks”. Because the data is huge, complex and partly noisy, drawing conclusions from it often takes sophisticated infrastructure, tools and skills, and different approaches across providers can end in “lower fidelity data”.

Inconsistencies and limits to comparability across providers are the FSB’s own terms. Put simply, two dashboards can give two different numbers for the same activity, and a supervisor may have no way of telling which is closer to the truth. Coindaro ran into the same problem this week with Coinbase’s stablecoin report and its filtered $891 billion volume figure, where the result depends on which transfers the compiler decides to throw out.

Those obstacles come in two kinds, according to the board. Some are structural and likely to last: public blockchains are pseudonymous. Others could be fixed, namely data that exists but is “not disclosed publicly or to authorities”, and the use of non-standard methods, heuristics, formats and coverage when data is compiled and shared. The note suggests authorities may need deeper in-house expertise in blockchain data, and warns that this could be “a significant undertaking” in some places, EMDEs among them.

Who holds the tokens, and where, is often unknown

A bank knows its depositors and manages withdrawals with a view of its whole balance sheet. A global stablecoin issuer, the FSB writes, “may not know who holds its liabilities, where those holders are domiciled, or, in some cases, where redemption demand will materialise.” The board calls those liabilities “internationally mobile” and “partly unobservable”, while the reserves and the holders’ legal protections stay at least partly anchored in specific countries.

The data section returns to the same point from another side. Attributing stablecoin activity to particular uses or countries is “often not possible”, because of pseudonymous transactions and the smart contracts that most stablecoins run on. When attribution can be done, the note says, it “may not be verifiable or reliable”, since the methods behind it are often proprietary, non-standard or undisclosed. Yet that is the data the FSB says supervisors need to understand where holdings are concentrated and how stablecoins flow across borders.

There has been progress too. Data availability “has improved significantly in recent years”, and the work so far has “largely been driven by industry because the task is complex and resource intensive.” Changes to disclosure and reporting rules, smart-contract design and data standards could help later. The FSB flags two limits of its own analysis: it is not a full list of the data supervisors need, and some of the same gaps exist in traditional finance.

Multi-issuer stablecoins are the weak point the FSB singles out

Much of the cross-border analysis converges on one structure. In a “multi-issuer” arrangement, affiliated companies in different jurisdictions share liability for a single stablecoin but each keeps its own reserves. A holder may be able to redeem with any of them. In calm markets, moving reserves between affiliates and trading on secondary markets keep redemptions and reserves lined up.

Under stress, the FSB argues, that balance can break. If holders can redeem wherever they like, regardless of where their tokens were issued, “redemption demand could concentrate on a single entity in the group.” Moving reserves to meet that demand depends on reserve mobility, market access, information flows and coordination, all of which “may break down during stress”. And if the location of some holders cannot be established, it may be unclear which issuer owes what, and what legal claim a holder actually has, in a crisis or an insolvency.

Which stablecoins work this way is left unsaid. Journal du Coin compared the setup to Circle’s USDC; that comparison is the outlet’s, not the FSB’s.

Round-the-clock trading on secondary markets could speed up and deepen a sell-off if redemptions cannot keep pace, although deep markets can also help arbitrage pull a token back to its peg. A run could spill into the wider financial system through fire sales of reserve assets, bank deposit withdrawals to fund redemptions, payment systems that depend on the token, and foreign exchange markets. In EMDEs, currency substitution, bank disintermediation and harder capital-flow management mean stablecoins “could become systemic at a lower threshold of use.”

No run or insolvency has tested the rules yet

One sentence closes the cross-border section of the note: “Global stablecoins and national regulatory frameworks remain untested in severe stress and insolvency.”

The FSB explains why a failure would be hard to handle. It may be difficult to decide which national insolvency regime applies. A stablecoin arrangement can be run across several entities and regulatory regimes, which can complicate oversight, crisis management and cooperation. Complex cross-border governance and distribution, and less liquid or lower-quality reserves held in jurisdictions that have not applied the FSB’s recommendations, can make liquidity and operational problems worse. The quantity and quality of reserves, and the rules an arrangement operates under, remain in the board’s words “essential determinants” of its resilience.

How national rules interact across borders, including the treatment of foreign-issued stablecoins, remains “uncertain or undefined in many jurisdictions”. According to the note, that has opened room for regulatory arbitrage, with some issuers choosing to operate from “more lightly regulated or unregulated jurisdictions”.

What the FSB asks for: metrics, data gaps, shared know-how

The requests are modest. On monitoring, the FSB wants authorities to track the depth, liquidity and structure of secondary markets, and the geographic spread of holdings, redemptions and reserve assets, “especially under the multi-issuer configuration”.

It also names three areas of its 2023 recommendations that “may warrant continued consideration”: better monitoring of cross-border vulnerabilities; support for implementation, mainly through cross-border cooperation and information-sharing; and gathering information on how authorities plan for the distress or failure of a global stablecoin arrangement.

For data, members and relevant authorities “could consider” three next steps: develop a set of financial stability metrics and identify data gaps; make better use of existing data through shared analytical expertise and coordination; and look at industry best practices for collecting and compiling data on and off chain. The steps are to be aligned internationally “where helpful” and repeated as market practices change. No date is attached to any of them.

Why the G20 asked, and where the 2023 rules stand

The note answers a request. When G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met in Asheville, North Carolina, on 31 August and 1 September 2026 under the US presidency, their chair’s statement committed to “clear pathways” for digital assets and said they awaited the FSB’s findings on the cross-border implications of global stablecoins, The Block reported. The FSB’s note uses the same phrase in its first paragraph.

According to the FSB press release of 12 October, Bailey, who is also Governor of the Bank of England, presented the stablecoin note together with a chair’s letter ahead of the 15 October meeting. The same package covered artificial intelligence, a peer review on public backstop funding in bank resolution, and a consultation on supervisory modernisation. The chair’s letter itself gives no stablecoin findings and no due date for further stablecoin work.

The reference text remains the FSB’s July 2023 high-level recommendations for the regulation, supervision and oversight of global stablecoin arrangements. Their implementation was reviewed in 2025, and the result was not flattering. The FSB’s peer review of 16 October 2025 found “significant gaps and inconsistencies”, with stablecoin rules lagging behind those for other crypto assets and few jurisdictions having finalised their frameworks for global stablecoins. “Implementation progress remains incomplete, uneven and inconsistent,” said Arthur Yuen, Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, who chaired the review. The new note does not update those findings; it says only that there is “no one-size-fits-all approach” and that each jurisdiction applies the recommendations within its own mandate and legal framework.

The FSB note in figures

What it means in Europe: MiCA and the EBA’s multi-issuer warning

Written for the world, the note still lands on the point European regulators are already arguing over. In its response to the Commission’s MiCA review on 24 September, the European Banking Authority said the MiCA rules for issuers of asset-referenced and e-money tokens are “broadly appropriate” but that third-country multi-issuer schemes need stronger rules. It asked the Commission to consider changes to “mitigate the significant to very significant risks posed by these schemes”, and suggested reviewing reserve rules, including the minimum share held as bank deposits.

France has pushed in the same direction, asking for ESMA supervision and specific rules for multi-issued tokens, as we reported in our piece on France’s MiCA review proposals. Linking the FSB note to that EU debate is Coindaro’s reading: no EU authority has publicly reacted to the note.

The currency split matters too. If 99% of stablecoin value is pegged to the dollar, every other currency, the euro included, shares less than 1% of a $300 billion market, roughly $3 billion. Unless they hold one of the small euro tokens, European holders are holding a dollar token: either one authorised under MiCA such as USDC, which the EBA will supervise directly from 12 November, or one that is not, which EU platforms must stop offering under ESMA’s January deadline for non-MiCA stablecoins. The EBA counted 39 e-money tokens issued under MiCA as of 1 September, and no authorised asset-referenced token.

Nothing changes for holders this week. No rule follows from the note, and redemption rights and platform access stay as they are. What it adds is the global standard-setter’s view that the multi-issuer structure Europe is debating is where redemptions could pile up in a crisis.

What comes next, and what has no date

There is no deadline for the metrics or the data-gap list, and no date for the FSB’s next stablecoin report. No G20 statement on stablecoins after the 15 October meeting in Bangkok could be found. The G20 leaders’ summit is set for 14 and 15 December 2026 at Trump National Doral, in Doral near Miami, according to the City of Doral; no source says stablecoins will be on its agenda.

What a stablecoin is

A stablecoin is a token that aims to keep a steady value, usually one dollar, backed by reserves that its issuer holds and promises to redeem. Our guide what are stablecoins explains how they work and how USDT and USDC differ.