The FSB maps where a stablecoin run would cross borders
A note to the G20 finds global stablecoins and the rules around them untested in severe stress, with multi-issuer designs most exposed.
2 minInstitutional Reports
The Financial Stability Board has sent the G20 a note on global stablecoin arrangements, published alongside chair Andrew Bailey's letter ahead of the finance ministers' and central bank governors' meeting on 15 October. Its conclusion is blunt: global stablecoins and the national frameworks around them remain untested in severe stress and insolvency.
The starting numbers are from the note itself. By mid-2026 the stablecoin market was worth around $300 billion, essentially unchanged from a year earlier, and 99% of that value is pegged to the US dollar.
Why cross-border is the hard part
The FSB contrasts a stablecoin issuer with a bank. A bank knows its depositors and manages redemptions with a view of its whole balance sheet. An issuer may not know who holds its tokens, where they are domiciled or where redemption demand will appear. The tokens trade around the clock worldwide, while reserves and holders' legal protections stay anchored in particular jurisdictions and redemption runs on those markets' hours. In stress, that mismatch can speed a sell-off faster than redemptions can keep up, although deep secondary markets can also pull a token back to its peg through arbitrage.
The structure the note flags most is the multi-issuer coin: affiliated issuers share liability for one stablecoin but keep separate reserves. If holders can redeem with any of them, demand can pile onto one entity while the assets sit elsewhere, and moving reserves gets harder in a crisis. It may also be unclear which country's insolvency rules apply.
Spillovers into traditional finance would run through reserve fire sales, bank deposit withdrawals to fund redemptions, payment dependencies and foreign-exchange markets. Emerging economies face extra risk from currency substitution and bank disintermediation, so a stablecoin could become systemic there at a lower level of use.
The FSB proposes three areas of further work: better monitoring of cross-border vulnerabilities, more cross-border cooperation and information sharing, and gathering emerging approaches to planning for a stablecoin's distress or failure.
Retold from Financial Stability Board. This is a summary in our own words; follow the link for the original reporting.