Fed drafts rules that would make stablecoin issuance a supervised bank business

Run the tiers on an issuer with $50 billion outstanding and the surcharge comes to $850 million: $400 million on the first $20 billion at 2%, plus $450 million on the next $30 billion at 1.5% ^[1]. TechTimes, which reported the proposal, put that issuer's minimum at roughly $1.15 billion, including $100 million on the portion above $50 billion ^[9]. An issuer at exactly $50 billion has no such portion. The report's own three line items add to $950 million ^[2], and $1.15 billion is what the schedule produces at $80 billion outstanding ^[3].

Larger floats show the schedule's shape. An issuer the size of Tether's USDT, about $184 billion by the report's count ^[10], would owe roughly $2.19 billion, an effective rate near 1.19% ^[4]. A flat 2% on the same float would be $3.68 billion ^[5]. The Fed chose a charge that falls with size, or rather one whose marginal rate halves between the first dollar issued and anything past $50 billion ^[5]. The proposal reaches state member banks and their stablecoin-issuing subsidiaries ^[4], so the USDT figure is an illustration of scale.

According to TechTimes, the surcharge is designed to absorb operational losses ^[6], and separate charges cover credit and operational risk ^[7]. A run is a liquidity problem. Holders want dollars faster than reserves turn into cash. The proposal answers that with reserves in short-term Treasury bills and other high-quality liquid assets ^[8], and with a trigger that forces an under-reserved issuer to notify the Fed immediately, submit to a remediation plan, or liquidate and redeem every coin ^[12]. Against a $50 billion float, the $850 million surcharge comes to 1.7 cents per coin ^[7].

TechTimes' summary of Barr's warning does not say which run scenario he meant ^[14]. The board approved both proposals unanimously ^[1], so his concern came with a yes vote.

Three outcomes look plausible from here. Issuers use the 60 days to argue the tiers down; Barr's concern pulls a run-specific liquidity rule into the final version; or the Fed finalizes close to the draft to hold the January 2027 date ^[15]. I'd expect the third. The Fed's two-day redemption clock already matches its peers' ^[11], and the FDIC aligned its reserve composition with the OCC's ^[16], so the drafts are converging. The counter-case is that the regulators have already missed the statute's one-year deadline once ^[2], which makes a second slip to add a run provision cheap. A final rule with a separate run requirement, or with moved breakpoints, would show that expectation was wrong.