#我在Gate广场过新年 SEC's 2% Investment Pledge: How Wall Street Brokers Are Devouring DeFi with 'Discount Rates'

This past Friday (February 20, 2026), while most of Wall Street was watching Michael Saylor’s reckless issuance of preferred shares to fill the Bitcoin plunge hole, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) quietly updated a line on its website’s FAQ page—an outdated, ugly, and long-neglected page. No press conference, no Gary Gensler’s signature paternal video speech, not even a tweet. The line was as dull as a photocopier repair manual, but it actually served as the SEC’s “blood oath” to Wall Street: when calculating net capital reserves, broker-dealers’ holdings of stablecoins—mainly USDC and USDT—have their Haircut (discount rate) slashed from 100% to 2%. If you don’t understand the absurdity and huge profits behind this, you won’t grasp why Goldman Sachs and Robinhood’s compliance departments are celebrating with champagne tonight.

From “Worthless” to “Almost Money”: Asset Alchemy

In Wall Street’s context, “Haircut” is a life-and-death term. According to the famous SEC 15c3-1 net capital rule, broker-dealers must always maintain sufficient liquid assets to manage risks. Before yesterday, if a regulated broker-dealer held $100 million in USDC on paper, the old rule’s “Haircut” was 100%. This meant, in the eyes of regulators, that this $100 million was as good as air—or a pile of rotten, illiquid wood in your backyard. To stay compliant, broker-dealers had to set aside another $100 million in real cash as collateral. This was a brutal waste of capital efficiency—any sane CFO would never allow such double occupancy. That’s also why traditional financial institutions have avoided on-chain settlement for years—it's too expensive, too unjustifiable. But SEC’s “2%” adjustment instantly performed a kind of asset-liability table alchemy. Now, the same $100 million USDC only needs to deduct 2% as risk reserve, leaving $98 million that can be directly counted as net capital. This change elevates the legal status of stablecoins from “high-risk crypto assets” to a level comparable with “money market funds.” It’s not just regulatory easing; it’s regulators admitting reality: they’ve finally realized—or been forced to admit—that these digital tokens issued by Circle or Tether are essentially indistinguishable from dollars in liquidity terms. For brokers who have long coveted the DeFi market, this is like unlocking the heavy chains on their hands and feet—billions of idle dollars can now flow into on-chain settlement layers without any costly compliance hurdles.

Gary Gensler’s “Silent Trojan Horse”

Don’t be naive into thinking this is SEC’s sudden act of mercy or a result of crypto punk idealism. On the contrary, it’s a highly cunning political calculation. By updating the FAQ instead of formal legislation, the SEC plays a clever “attack-and-retreat” game. Informal guidance lacks the rigidity of legal statutes, meaning that if market turbulence occurs or an algorithmic stablecoin crashes again, regulators can revoke this “passport” at any time and shift the blame entirely. The cunning of this “informal policy” lies in providing Wall Street with a long-sought liquidity gateway without giving the crypto industry any clear legal standing. Even more deeply ironic, this opening isn’t primarily for the prosperity of decentralized finance (DeFi), but to rescue the shrinking profit margins of traditional finance. Just look at HSBC next door, which announced yesterday it laid off 10% of its US debt capital markets team. Traditional banking is shrinking, while on-chain trading volume explodes. SEC’s rate cut effectively allows traditional brokers to become gatekeepers of the crypto world. They no longer need to build decentralized protocols; they only need to leverage this 2% low-cost advantage to monopolize the fiat-to-crypto channel. It’s a Trojan horse—on the surface, a victory for crypto, but in reality, a dimensionality reduction of Wall Street’s formal army’s control over DeFi. Originally designed to decentralize, blockchain technology is turning into the most efficient settlement backend in the hands of these top intermediaries.

Hundreds of Billions of Dollars’ Hunting Grounds Officially Open

This 2% discount rate is the starting gun. We are about to witness a dramatic restructuring of broker-dealer business models. Since holding stablecoins’ capital cost is now nearly negligible, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, and even JPMorgan’s trading desks have no reason to refuse 24/7 on-chain settlement. The ancient T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles will seem like relics in the face of real-time atomic swaps at T+0. These institutions no longer need complex bank transfers to move funds; they can directly stockpile billions in USDC on their balance sheets for instant client clearing and cross-border arbitrage. This also explains why the market reacts so strangely calm. True hunters don’t make noise before the kill. While you’re still arguing on social media about some meme coin’s rise or fall, Wall Street’s actuaries are recalculating leverage ratios on their balance sheets. The liquidity released isn’t just numbers; it’s fuel that changes the game. DeFi protocols have long suffered from a lack of “sticky” institutional funds, but now, the final gate is opening. However, these inflows won’t carry the warmth of “community consensus”—they come with Wall Street’s cold efficiency and greed for yields. Stablecoins are no longer just toys in the crypto world; they’ve officially become chips on Wall Street’s gambling table, and this 2% entry fee is the beginning of their takeover.