The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) plans to sharpen its focus on stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in 2023, with the goal of “improving payment systems” and “securing the financial sector,” according to its latest report.
Among its ambitions is Project Pyxtrial—an experiment launched by the Innovation Hub’s London Centre to help central banks systemically monitor stablecoins and their balance sheets.
“Most central banks lack tools to systemically monitor stablecoins and avoid asset-liability mismatches,” the BIS said. “The project will investigate various technological tools that may help supervisors and regulators to build policy frameworks based on integrated data.”

Moody’s Mulls Stablecoin Scores as Regulators Circle: Report
Moody’s Corporation is reportedly planning to develop a scoring system for stablecoins, per reporting from Bloomberg. The scoring system will include up to 20 stablecoins, analyzing the quality of each reserve's attestation. The system will not reportedly be an official credit rating. Stablecoins—which are cryptocurrencies intended to trade at an equal value to a non-digital asset, such as the U.S. dollar or gold—are the market's most-traded crypto asset, with a combined trading volume of $7....
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies value-pegged to assets that are usually stable in price such as fiat currencies, like the U.S. dollar. To maintain the peg, the stablecoin issuer is expected to maintain reserves of equal or greater value to the tokens they've distributed and offer constant dollar convertibility using those reserves.
Besides stablecoins, the BIS said that it is continuing to experiment with retail CBDCs for enabling cheaper cross-border payments. "Automated market makers for foreign exchange using CBDCs are also being explored,” it said.
Additional research is being deployed toward tools for monitoring financial markets in real-time, including cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance.
All eyes on stablecoins
With top stablecoins making up a $100 billion market, regulators are scrambling for an appropriate way to regulate the ecosystem as it becomes more entrenched with mainstream finance.
TerraUSD (UST), once the third largest stablecoin by market cap, collapsed due to design flaws last May. Its implosion kicked off a string of bankruptcies around the industry for months to come.
The largest stablecoin, Tether (USDT), is the market's oldest and is built much differently than Terra's UST.

Tether Hires Accounting Firm BDO Italia for Stablecoin Reserves, Adds Monthly Reports
Ah, Tether—the most popular stablecoin, pegged to the U.S. Dollar and backed by cold, hard cash. Among other assets, as it was eventually forced to admit. Now, Tether Limited has announced that it's hired BDO Italia as its new accounting firm, with a brief to produce monthly attestation reports for its stablecoin USDT’s reserves. Tether and Bitfinex CTO Paulo Ardoino tweeted out a meme with the news. “Tether attestations will be completed by BDO Italia, part of BDO global, top 5 accounting firm...
Still, it faces frequent criticism for failing to provide a full audit of its reserves from a Big Four accounting firm. The firm's current auditor is BDO Italia and they execute attestations of Tether's reserves on a monthly basis.
Attestations from Tether and Circle, the second-largest stablecoin issuer behind USDC, suggest that their tokens are fully backed by reserves entirely comprised of cash and U.S. Treasuries.