This time, the ECB and the central banks of EU member states have turned their focus on MiCA’s bank deposit requirements, wanting to replace them with liquidity thresholds. The rationale is stated very plainly: if stablecoins are redeemed suddenly, they will directly drain the asset-liability balance sheets of lending institutions. In the same document, they also plan to extend the revenue prohibition from payment tokens to lending and staking, arguing that indirect revenue structures blur the line between electronic payment tokens and commercial bank deposits. I looked at these two measures—what they’re truly worried about isn’t stablecoins themselves, but deposits moving. When money is transferred from bank accounts onto the blockchain, a chunk is removed from the banks’ liabilities, and lending capacity shrinks accordingly. The “Big Six” banks in Canada are already doing tokenized deposits between banks, while Europe is still debating how to keep stablecoins in check. In the end, these two paths may collide—or they may simply go in separate directions; I don’t have an answer yet. $USDC