FSB calls for Turkish stablecoin issuer rules after peer review

The Financial Stability Board called on Türkiye to establish dedicated rules for stablecoin issuers, concluding that the country’s broader crypto framework still leaves a significant gap around fiat-referenced tokens.

The global standard setter published its second peer review of Türkiye on November 11. It credited authorities with extending registration, licensing and custody requirements across much of the domestic crypto market, while recommending additional work on stablecoins, financial-stability monitoring, enforcement and cross-border cooperation.

The review does not enact a Turkish regulation, set an implementation deadline or prohibit any named stablecoin. The FSB develops international standards and conducts peer reviews; Turkish authorities would have to decide how to translate its recommendations into domestic law and supervision.

Stablecoin issuers remain outside a dedicated regime

Türkiye already subjects crypto-asset service providers to capital-market oversight and requires separation of customer assets. Crypto assets cannot be used for domestic payments, while anti-money-laundering controls and platform rules provide authorities with some visibility into stablecoin trading, transfers and custody.

Those measures do not amount to comprehensive supervision of the issuers themselves, the FSB found. Its proposed framework would establish requirements for effective stabilization mechanisms, transparent reserve management and clear redemption rights. Authorities would also need to clarify how fiat-pegged tokens interact with payments and electronic-money legislation.

Foreign-issued, foreign-currency stablecoins present a separate challenge. The FSB recommended targeted expectations for their reserve composition, peg stability, transparency, attestations and auditing when they circulate through domestic platforms. It also called for cooperation with regulators in an issuer’s home jurisdiction.

That distinction matters because a Turkish exchange can be supervised locally even when the entity issuing a listed stablecoin is based elsewhere. Platform oversight therefore cannot, by itself, establish the quality or availability of the assets supporting the token.

Turnover is large, but exposure measurements are incomplete

The review cited Chainalysis data showing nearly $200 billion of crypto transactions involving Türkiye during 2025. That annual activity estimate measures transaction flows, not the amount residents held at year-end, and it includes methodology and coverage limitations inherent in blockchain-attribution data.

A narrower official registry showed approximately $3 billion of crypto holdings during 2026, equivalent to about 0.3% of Turkish banking-sector assets. The FSB cautioned that the registry excludes self-custodied assets and holdings with providers outside the regulated reporting perimeter. The two figures consequently describe different populations and measurement windows and should not be compared as equivalent market-size estimates.

Turkish authorities also reported more than 7.1 million crypto accounts associated with 5.3 million entities, but only 51% of the accounts had a positive balance. Account totals are not the same as unique active users because one entity can be associated with multiple accounts.

The FSB said stablecoins can serve as stores of value or routes to offshore platforms when users seek foreign-currency exposure. However, it found limited evidence of widespread stablecoin use for domestic merchant payments. Turkish authorities also assessed current connections between crypto markets and the traditional financial system as limited, even while identifying capital flows, bank funding and currency substitution as risks worth monitoring.

Recommendations are not a market verdict

The review also identified unfinished work in Türkiye’s existing crypto framework. The transition from interim registration to full licensing remains underway, regulatory reporting can contain incomplete fields or intermittent transmissions, and proof-of-reserve disclosures are point-in-time and not standardized across firms.

Those limitations explain why the FSB recommended a defined licensing schedule, more consistent incident reporting and monitoring that combines supervisory, onchain and cross-border data. They do not establish that a particular platform or stablecoin is insolvent, unsafe or violating Turkish law.

The review is explicitly limited to financial-stability regulation. It is not a comprehensive assessment of consumer protection, cybersecurity, taxation, market integrity or anti-money-laundering effectiveness. The next verifiable milestone would be a Turkish legislative or regulatory proposal specifying issuer obligations and an implementation timetable.