Central Banks Ask Brussels to Remove the 60% Deposit Floor

Europe's central banks have formally asked Brussels to delete one of the most consequential stablecoin rules in MiCA, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation — and the request strikes at the very clause that has kept Tether out of the bloc.

In comments filed on Tuesday during the European Commission's review of the regulation, the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) — the grouping that unites the European Central Bank (ECB) with the national central banks of all 27 EU member states — urged policymakers to scrap the requirement forcing major stablecoin issuers to park 60% of their reserves in commercial bank deposits.

The objection centers on bank funding rather than token safety. Money that swings with token issuance and redemption does not constitute stable deposit funding, the filing argued and a wave of heavy redemptions could drain such deposits from lenders overnight. As an alternative, the central banks propose that a minimum share of reserves — the cash and bonds an issuer holds to back every token it has sold on a blockchain — be held in assets that mature within one to five working days.

The same filing conceded that supervisors face “material challenges” enforcing the rulebook, because non-compliant crypto firms continue to reach EU customers. The ECB has separately warned that expanding euro stablecoin issuance could squeeze bank lending — a tension that sits awkwardly beside the institution's own central bank digital currency ambitions.

The deposit floors at issue are tiered: ordinary issuers must keep 30% of funds in bank deposits, while issuers the EU classifies as significant must keep 60%.

Tether Refused to Operate Under the Same Clause

Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin in circulation and pegged to the US dollar, never sought an EU license under MiCA — and its chief executive has argued since 2024 that the deposit floor the central banks now want rewritten makes tokens less safe, not more. The reason is concentration risk: EU deposit insurance stops at 100,000 euros per depositor, meaning a bank failure could strand far more of an issuer's reserve pile than that ceiling protects.

“When MiCA becomes safer for consumers and stablecoin issuers, then we might reconsider,” Ardoino argued in a public post on X.

The two complaints now sitting in front of the Commission pull in opposite directions: Ardoino wants the token protected from the banks, while the central banks want the banks protected from the token.

The commercial fallout is already visible across the region — Revolut dropped USDT for European users this year, and compliant euro-pegged rivals now compete for the bloc's trading volume across networks such as Stellar (XLM). The fight matters beyond the rulebook: stablecoins are the market's basic settlement layer, the tokens most often used to move between crypto assets, so which issuers Europe licenses shapes the trading options available to its residents. Lobbying is also reshaping the debate from the issuer side: in July, Circle backed a modification of the same reserve rule that could reopen a legal path for Tether's return.

Consultation Closes September 30

For now, USDT remains unauthorized in the EU, and the 30% and 60% floors stay law until EU lawmakers actually amend the regulation. Article 54 of MiCA, as consolidated in ESMA's interactive single rulebook, fixes the deposit floors at 30% for ordinary issuers and 60% for significant ones — a final rule that binds every stablecoin issuer authorized in the EU today.

The ESCB's Tuesday comments are only a proposal inside a consultation that closes on September 30; nothing changes unless EU lawmakers amend the regulation itself. Tether holds no EU authorization, so the floors do not bind it directly — but they will decide whether USDT can ever legally come back.