UniCredit warns Europe may struggle to contain crypto-bank crisis under MiCA rules

Europe may struggle to contain a financial shock tied to crypto firms and banks because its crisis tools are more limited than those used in the U.S. during the 2023 banking turmoil, a senior official with European bank UniCredit said Thursday.

Elena Carletti, UniCredit’s deputy vice chair and head of the board’s risk committee, said European authorities may not be able to guarantee crypto-linked deposits in the same way U.S. regulators did after the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Reuters reported.

Speaking at a banking conference hosted by Madrid’s IESE Business School, Carletti said the U.S. decision to protect all deposits, including funds held by stablecoin issuers, helped stabilize crypto markets during the crisis.

“The same decision cannot be easily taken in Europe,” Carletti said.

The comments come as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, known as MiCA, pushes stablecoin issuers closer to traditional banks. The rules require certain stablecoin reserves to be held in liquid assets such as bank deposits and government securities.

That link could have become a problem during the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March 2023. Circle, issuer of the USDC stablecoin, revealed that $3.3 billion of its reserves were held at the bank at the time of the crisis. USDC briefly lost its dollar peg as investors rushed to redeem tokens.

U.S. regulators later guaranteed all deposits at SVB and Signature Bank, including balances above federal insurance limits, helping restore confidence in crypto markets.

Carletti warned that Europe’s deposit guarantee system, which generally protects up to 100,000 euros ($116,500) per depositor per bank, may not be able to absorb similar stress if large stablecoin reserve accounts come under pressure.

“That means that we are forcing a certain alliance of stablecoin and ⁠crypto ​providers with the banking sector without the ​possibility of extending insurance in the same way, and that to me is a double ​form of weakness,” she added.