Banks across the US, the UK, and Europe finally have a legal path to issue stablecoins, custody Bitcoin, and settle tokenized funds, yet the capital rulebook that governs it all still treats a Bitcoin position as something close to a guaranteed loss.

Under the Basel Committee’s cryptoasset standard, which has been live in member jurisdictions since January 1, 2026, unbacked crypto is in the most punitive bucket in the whole framework, carrying a 1,250% risk weight. Once you push that through Basel’s 8% minimum, you end up with a bank holding capital equal to its full exposure, a dollar of equity set aside for every dollar of Bitcoin on the books.

That gap between permission and capital cost is the part of crypto regulation almost…