Basel Committee Warms Up to Bitcoin & Crypto With More Flexible Proposal
Source: Adobe/Georg Hummer After receiving criticism from industry players last year for being too conservative, a committee at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), has proposed a cap on how much exposure traditional banks can have to cryptoassets &ldquo ;where there is no counterparty.” According to a new consultation report from the BIS’ Basel Committee on Banking Supervision , the exposure limit for banks should be set at 1% of “Tier 1 capital,” meaning the capital held in a bank&rsquo ;s main reserves. The proposed cap applies to all cryptoassets that are considered unbacked, or that have “no counterparty,” as the BIS puts it. An example of such an asset is bitcoin (BTC), the BIS report said. The 1% cap will apply to the total exposure, meaning that a bank that already has 0.5% of its capital in BTC can at most have another 0.5% invested in another unbacked cryptoasset. The proposed 1% cap is an attempt to bring rules for banks’ exposure to