Opinion, Opinion As banks like Citi and Bank and America enter the stablecoin market, they’re likely to bring their own tech stack and clearing expertise with them. If crypto consortiums do not step in with alternatives, TradFi-style clearinghouses will dominate the landscape, says John deVadoss.
With the expected passage of the GENIUS Act this week, the $260‑billion stablecoin market is on the cusp of becoming a formally regulated part of the U.S. financial system.
The next step is institutional, bringing the time‑tested model of clearinghouses into the world of tokenized money.
Why clearing matters
Traditional clearinghouses, formally called central clearing counterparties, stand between buyers and sellers, netting exposures, collecting collateral and mutualizing losses if a member defaults. That plumbing is mundane until something breaks; then, it becomes the firewall that prevents a localized shock from becoming a systemic risk. Recognizing the “too‑central‑to‑fail” profile of these utilities, the Financial Stability Board spent 2024 writing new global standards for their orderly resolution.
Enter stablecoins, at global scale.
They promise dollar‑for‑dollar redemption but trade on borderless blockchains where liquidity can evaporate in near real—time. Today each issuer is its own first and last line of defense; redemptions pile up exactly when asset markets are least forgiving. Stablecoin clearinghouses would pool that redemption risk, enforce real‑time margining, and give regulators a control panel for data and a toolbox for crisis intervention.
To be sure, many will think that clearinghouses are anathema to a decentralized financial system, but via the Genius Act, D.C. and Wall Street are sending signals for the stablecoin industry to follow.
Congress has already nudged us there
Buried in Section 104 of the GENIUS Act is a quiet endorsement of central clearing: stablecoin reserves may include short‑term Treasury repo only if the repo is centrally cleared (or if the counterparty passes a Fed‑style stress test).
That small clause plants a seed. Once issuers must interface with a clearinghouse for their own collateral management, extending the model to the tokens themselves is a short conceptual hop –especially as intraday settlement windows shrink from hours to seconds.
Wall Street sees the opportunity
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) — the utility that processes $3.7 quadrillion of securities every year — confirmed in June that it is “assessing options” to issue its own stablecoin. Meanwhile, a consortium of the largest U.S. banks — backers of The Clearing House real‑time payments network — is exploring a joint bank‑backed stablecoin, explicitly citing their clearing expertise as a competitive advantage.
As either of these, or other yet to be publicly announced ventures, proceed forward, the risk‑management stack that they bring to market will likely become the dominant blueprint. (Bank of America and Citi have both said recently they want to issue their own stablecoins.)
New governance models are in motion
The Bank for International Settlements said this month that stablecoins still “fall short” of sound‑money tests and could trigger “fire sales” of reserves without robust guardrails. If a mammoth player were to join a clearinghouse and then falter, the default could dwarf margin funds, raising too‑big‑to‑bail questions for taxpayers. Governance will likely converge on a bespoke framework; designing a charter that satisfies international regulators eyeing cross‑border spillovers will require the kind of multilateral horse‑trading typical of Basel committees.
How a stablecoin clearinghouse would work
- Membership & capital – Issuers (and possibly major exchanges) would become clearing members, posting high‑quality collateral and paying default‑fund assessments just as futures brokers do today.
- Netting & settlement – The clearinghouse would maintain omnibus on‑chain accounts, netting bilateral flows into a single multilaterally netted position each block, then settling with finality by transferring stablecoins (or tokens representing reserve assets) between members.
- Redemption windows – If redemption queues spike beyond preset thresholds, the utility could impose pro‑rata payouts or auction collateral, slowing the bleed long enough for orderly asset sales.
- Transparency & data – Because every token transfer touches the clearinghouse’s smart contract, regulators would gain a real‑time, consolidated ledger of systemic exposures — something impossible in today’s fragmented pools.
Congress is codifying the reserve and disclosure rules. Wall Street is preparing the balance‑sheet heft. And global standard‑setters are already sketching the resolution playbooks.
CryptoExpect niche institutional use cases to dominate early — collateral mobility, overnight funding — resulting in intraday liquidity savings for institutions and a public‑good risk shield for the Fed. If crypto consortiums do not step in, TradFi-style clearinghouses will dominate the landscape.
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