The reserve issues of stablecoins are brought up every year around this time.

Let's look at what the data says. According to the reserve reports publicly disclosed by leading stablecoin issuers, there is indeed a clear structural problem: for every 1 unit of liabilities, about 1.037 units of assets support it. It sounds quite stable, but a closer look reveals some nuances—the 0.88 part consists of high-liquidity dollar assets (like U.S. Treasuries), while the remaining 0.15 is high-volatility assets such as Bitcoin and gold.

Some analysts point out that if the prices of BTC and gold drop sharply, this 1.037 of assets backing the stablecoin could fall below the 1.0 liability line, potentially leading to under-collateralization risks. Logically, this argument has no flaws. The more fundamental question is: why allocate part of the reserves into volatile assets instead of fully covering them with dollar-denominated assets? This is also the core reason why these products have yet to gain traction in the US and Europe.

For every unit issued, the issuer not only earns interest from government bonds but also effectively provides all token holders with a free 0.15 leverage exposure—this calculation just doesn’t add up right.

But there’s another aspect worth pondering. The reserve reports published by issuers are not the full financial statements—the biggest black box is the dividend payouts. Over the past nine months, they have paid out $10 billion in dividends. Considering the recent high-interest-rate environment, it’s reasonable to infer that they have moved $20 to $30 billion of equity out of the apparent reserve structure through dividends, which is not visible in the publicly disclosed reserve proofs.

If these funds remain within the corporate system, the real safety cushion could be much more robust than the current figures suggest.

Ultimately, when a stablecoin reaches a systemically important size globally, ensuring genuine full USD backing becomes much more critical than the marginal returns from leveraged positions. The annual trust crisis and the damage it inflicts on the brand are simply not worth the extra yield.