Stablecoins may soon be classified under the “cash” category—far more important than adding yet another payment scenario.
The U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has recently proposed that:
Qualified stablecoins in the future may be reported by companies as cash equivalents.
What does that mean?
Previously, when companies held stablecoins, the first thing they thought of was still “digital assets.”
If the new rule is ultimately implemented, some stablecoins in financial statements may be more akin to highly liquid assets such as short-term Treasury bills and money market funds.
But the bar is not low.
To make it into this category, at least several core conditions must be met:
They can be redeemed for cash directly with the issuer at any time;
The redemption amount is clearly defined;
Reserves are segregated on at least a 1:1 basis and are mainly held in short-term, highly liquid assets.
So this is not “all stablecoins become cash.”
Those that truly benefit are stablecoins with transparent reserves, the ability to be redeemed at par value, and a high degree of regulatory compliance.
The bigger significance for Crypto is this:
In the past, stablecoins solved the problem of “how to move dollars on-chain.”
Now the U.S. is starting to address another issue:
Why would businesses dare to put stablecoins genuinely into treasury and cash management systems?
If these rules are ultimately adopted, stablecoin competition may shift from exchanges and on-chain payments to corporate finance, cross-border settlement, and the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA).
This isn’t about how much a coin’s price rises in a day.
It’s about stablecoins trying to move from being “dollars inside Crypto” to “digital cash” that businesses can truly use on their books.#FASB拟允许合格稳定币计入现金等价物