The Hong Kong Monetary Authority today released a research report titled “An Assessment Of The Volatility Spillover From Crypto To Traditional Financial Assets: The Role Of Asset-backed Stablecoins.” The report said that with a perceived stable value offered by the backing of traditional financial assets, asset-backed stablecoins play a pivotal role in the crypto ecosystem. However, these stablecoins bear liquidity mismatch risks similar to money market funds, which may expose them to a fire-sale of reserve assets in times of crypto ecosystem instability and in turn increase the volatility of these reserve assets. In extreme circumstances, failures of stablecoins or other crypto assets could result in large-scale redemptions of asset-backed stablecoins and a fire-sale of their reserve assets, potentially posing material impacts on the traditional financial system.

The report said that as the crypto ecosystem continues to expand and is increasingly exposed to the financial sector, the linkages between crypto and traditional financial assets are likely to become stronger, potentially increasing the risk spillover discussed above. Importantly, the crypto ecosystem remains largely outside the oversight of regulators, with large data gaps impeding their assessments of the spillover risk. Given that the international regulatory community is considering putting in place appropriate regimes to regulate stablecoins, this study concludes with two suggestions that regulators may consider: 1. Requiring standardised and regular disclosures by the issuers of asset-backed stablecoins on their reserve assets holdings which could help regulators assess and compare their liquidity condition and potential liquidity mismatch risk. This could enable regulators to consider, in a more timely manner, taking appropriate measures to reduce the spillover risk in times of market disruption; 2. Strengthening the asset-backed stablecoins' liquidity management, possibly by imposing restrictions on the composition of reserve assets and requiring welldefined redemption rights, which may also help reduce the spillover risk.