The stablecoin collateral fiction
Reserves disclosed monthly are not reserves verified continuously. The distinction matters more than the industry pretends.
Every major stablecoin issuer now publishes monthly attestations. A non-trivial fraction of professional investors read these as continuous proof of solvency. They are not. They are a snapshot — and the gap between snapshots is where every historic collateral failure in finance has lived.
What MiCA actually requires
The European Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation mandates daily reserve reporting for significant e-money tokens. The US framework, still in flux, does not. This regulatory arbitrage is now the single largest source of opacity in dollar-denominated stablecoins held by African and Latin American users.
“You cannot audit what you only observe once a month.”
A modest proposal
Stablecoin issuers serving emerging-market corridors should commit to real-time reserve attestation via on-chain proof-of-reserves backed by a regulated custodian. The technology exists. The reluctance is commercial, not technical.
Researches market microstructure and digital asset infrastructure. Author of Synthetic Money (2024).