From ICOs to digital currency exchanges, the FSB provided an overview of its work and that of related organizations studying the crypto-asset phenomenon. Don’t worry though – for now, it says crypto-assets won’t cause a meltdown of the conventional markets.
On July 16, 2018, the Financial Stability Board (an organization that studies and makes recommendations about the global markets) published an eight-page report[1] on crypto-assets and the work of standard-setting organizations, including the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures[2] (CPMI), the International Organization of Securities Commissions[3] (IOSCO), and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision[4] (BCBS). The report is directed at G20[5] finance ministers and central bank governors who will meet in Argentina from July 21 to July 22, 2018.
The FSB believes that crypto-assets "do not pose a material risk to global financial stability at this time," but encouraged "vigilant monitoring." Altogether, the organizations have created tools to monitor the implications of the crypto-asset market, conducted research into distributed ledger technology (DLT), offered guidance for initial coin offering (ICO) supervision, and begun quantifying "the materiality of banks' direct and indirect exposures to crypto-assets." Metrics to be monitored by the FSB include a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data (presented in the report's annex).
Source: FSB Report Annex
What's notable about these data points is that the information gleaned from exchanges might not be reliable due to illicit market activity (e.g., wash trading[6]). Additionally, it might not be possible to acquire information about certain banking relationships or confirm that various assets are backed by claimed reserves (e.g., Tether[7]). Furthermore, measuring adoption in payments and settlements could become a fool's errand as certain cryptocurrency companies frequently claim
