FSB Tells Türkiye It Needs a Stablecoin Regime in Crypto Peer Review

Türkiye should set up a dedicated rulebook for stablecoins, the Financial Stability Board said Wednesday in a peer review of a crypto market that handled nearly $200 billion in transactions in 2025.

The FSB is the Basel-based group that coordinates financial rules for the G20. In 2023 it finished a global framework for crypto and stablecoins, and its members agreed to be checked against it. Türkiye volunteered for this review.

Where Türkiye stands

The review says Turkish authorities have made real progress since 2025. Crypto service providers must now register and get licensed by the Capital Markets Board (CMB). Crypto can't be used for domestic payments, and platforms may keep no more than 5% of client crypto in their own wallets. The rest sits with a separate custodian.

The size, per the report:

• more than 7.1 million crypto accounts, though only 51% hold a balance
• about $3 billion of holdings at licensed local providers, per official data cited in the report
• about $0.5 billion in daily crypto trading, against $3.9 billion on Borsa Istanbul

Bitcoin, ether, XRP and USDT make up more than 45% of local holdings.

The stablecoin gap

A stablecoin is a token pegged to a currency such as the dollar and backed by reserves. Türkiye treats them like any other crypto asset, the report says, so there are no specific rules on reserves or redemption, the main protections when a coin loses its peg. Some payment-type coins may fall under e-money rules instead.

The report says many users buy dollar stablecoins, mainly USDT, either to hedge against a weaker lira or to move money to foreign platforms. The only lira stablecoin from a local issuer, BiLira, has a market value of about $5.9 million.

The FSB also asks for a financial-stability monitoring framework, tougher supervision and enforcement, and more cross-border information sharing. Bank custody licensing has taken around 12 to 18 months, the report says, and industry firms quoted in it said no licensed bank had yet started offering custody.

In our opinion: the hole the FSB found is the one that matters most to ordinary users, since a lira holder buying USDT is trusting reserves that no Turkish rule addresses. The report doesn't set a deadline, so the next thing to look for is a draft stablecoin law from Ankara and the first bank actually opening a custody desk.