An unfamiliar stablecoin: five things to check before you hold it
On 10 April 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued its first two stablecoin issuer licences, to Anchorpoint Financial Limited and to HSBC. The last paragraph was addressed to the public: watch for scams claiming a link to the licensees, check the HKMA's register or ask the licensees directly when in doubt, and only acquire or use stablecoins through regulated channels.
That advice travels well beyond Hong Kong. When a group chat is pushing a dollar stablecoin you have never heard of, you can't verify the yield, the backers or the peg they describe. You can, however, check five other things yourself, with no account and no fee: who issues it, what backs it, who is allowed to redeem it, where it actually trades, and whether the token in front of you is the issuer's own.
The issuer comes first because if that answer is missing, the other four can't make up for it. For our take on specific newer coins such as USDe and PYUSD, see USDe, PYUSD and the newer stablecoins; the routine here works whatever the coin is called.
1. Who wrote the IOU
A stablecoin is an IOU. Somebody took in dollars and promised the token is worth one. Before anything else, find that somebody's legal name: the registered company, not the ticker and not the project's brand.
It's usually in the terms of service, in a sentence along the lines of "these terms are an agreement between you and … Ltd". Take that exact name to the public register of whichever regulator the coin claims to answer to. Two registers you can open today:
- Hong Kong. The HKMA keeps a Register of Licensed Stablecoin Issuers with each licensee's name, address and email contact. The April announcement named the two licensees above.
- European Union. ESMA publishes an interim MiCA register. Don't expect a search box: it's a set of CSV files, and one of them lists issuers of e-money tokens, the category most single-currency stablecoins fall into. ESMA says the files are updated weekly; when we opened the page on 11 September 2026 it showed a last update of 9 September.
A name you can't find can mean one of two things. Plenty of stablecoins never apply for a licence anywhere, and a missing licence on its own doesn't tell you the coin is a scam; it just means nobody but the issuer stands behind the 1:1 promise. But if the marketing says "regulated in X" and the name is missing from X's register, that's the plainest stop sign on this whole list.
Of the five, this is the one we give the most weight: if you can't say who is on the hook, a polished reserve report doesn't tell you whom to hold to it.
2. What stands behind the dollar
Once you know who's promising, look at what holds the dollar up. Work out which kind of coin it is first, because the two kinds leave very different paperwork.
Reserve-backed (fiat-collateralised): you're looking for a report from a third party, and you want three things from it: who signed it, what date it's as of, and how far assets exceed liabilities. A pie chart on the issuer's site with no accounting firm named anywhere is just the issuer describing itself. Which lines to read once a real report is open is covered in how to read a stablecoin reserve report yourself.
Strategy-backed (synthetic or algorithmic): there is no reserve report to find. Look for the mechanism documentation instead, and pull two sentences out of it. One: what action keeps the price at a dollar. Two: under what market conditions that action stops working. If the second sentence isn't there, treat it as unanswered. For what failure looks like when it happens, UST is still the most complete example; see why algorithmic stablecoins are risky.
If the pitch includes a yield, add one question here: who is paying it? Ordinary stablecoins like USDT and USDC pay holders nothing. Coins designed to pay a yield get it from reserve interest or a trading strategy, so someone is paying and someone is carrying the risk, and the documentation ought to say who.
3. Who is allowed to redeem
The terms say 1:1. The next question is who can actually hand the token back to the issuer and get a dollar. Find the redemption terms and note who they're open to, the minimum and the fees.
Don't expect them to be written for you. Tether's window requires verification and a $100,000 minimum; Circle's is open only to Circle Mint institutional accounts. In practice neither is usable by an ordinary individual, as laid out in can you actually redeem 1 USDT for $1? Newer coins are usually similar. Be more wary if there are no redemption terms at all, or just the word "redeemable" with nothing on who or how.
A market price sits near 1.00 only while someone can buy below it and redeem at par. Take that away and the price is held up by nothing except buyers and sellers agreeing to keep believing. As for you, your only realistic exit is selling to whoever is next in the market.
4. Where you could actually sell it
Start by finding where the coin trades. Price-aggregator sites usually have a "Markets" tab on each coin page listing the exchanges and on-chain pools. Count them, then look at whether the volume is concentrated in one or two places. If it is, the price you'd get when selling is set by the order books in those one or two places.
The same coin can be priced very differently depending on where you look. During the liquidation cascade on 10 October 2025, CoinDesk reported on 13 October that USDe fell as low as about $0.65 on Binance, dipped to around $0.92 on Bybit and stayed within 1% of a dollar on Curve. Those prices come from a news report, not from figures published by the exchanges or the issuer. The report gave two reasons Binance fell furthest. Unlike some other venues, it had no direct dealer relationships for minting and redeeming USDe, so market makers couldn't arbitrage the peg back quickly. And its oracle took prices from its own relatively illiquid order book, which set off a cascade of liquidations that deepened the drop.
Binance is the exchange our referral links point to. We're using the example anyway, because the lesson has nothing to do with which exchange it was: wherever you plan to sell is the order book that matters.
It cuts the other way too. A collapse on one venue doesn't mean the issuer is in trouble; Curve barely moved that day. When a number on one screen plunges, compare a second venue before deciding whether the problem is the coin or the place.
While you're there, look at the venue you'd actually use. How much is resting just above and below 1.00, and how wide is the gap between the best bid and the best ask? If your own modest order would knock the price down noticeably, that's not a good place to plan an exit.
5. Whether your token is the issuer's token
The first four checks were about the coin. The last one is about what's in your wallet. Any number of contracts on a chain can carry the same name, and only some of them come from the issuer.
Trust the chain and contract address listed on the issuer's own website, and nothing else. An address pasted into a group chat doesn't count; neither does the top search result. Compare the official address with the one your wallet or deposit page shows, character by character, all the way through. Checking just the first and last few characters isn't enough; lookalike addresses that match at both ends are a well-known trick.
Then there are tokens that share the name but not the source: bridged tokens. The issuer never minted on that chain. A bridge locked the original tokens on their home chain and issued a stand-in on the new one, so what you hold is the bridge's claim on the original, and getting back to the real thing means going through the bridge. If the issuer's own address list doesn't mention that chain, this is usually what you're looking at.
For what fake and clone contracts typically look like, see the traps that come with holding USDT.
Putting the five answers to work
You'll come out of this with five answers, some clear and some missing. The table below is how we handle each one ourselves. It's one way of drawing the line, not investment advice.
| What you found | What it tells you | What we do |
|---|---|---|
| Claims a licence, not on the register | Marketing and facts disagree | We don't hold it |
| No legal issuer name anywhere | Nobody clearly on the hook | We don't hold it |
| A pie chart, no third-party report | Reserves are self-reported | We treat the reserves as unverified |
| No redemption terms | Nothing explains the 1.00 | We only pass it through, never park it |
| Volume in one or two places | Your exit price lives there | We size to that order book |
| Address differs from the issuer's list | Not the same coin | We don't accept or buy it |
No row says "all five check out, so relax". Passing all five means a coin stands up to what public information can show; whether anything goes wrong tomorrow is beyond what this table can tell you. Major stablecoins have broken their pegs before; the history is in the depeg timeline.
Next time someone pitches you a new stablecoin, skip the question about yield and ask for the issuer's legal name. If they can't give it, you can stop listening there.
Primary sources and check date
Checked 11 September 2026; any of these may have changed since:
- HKMA: Granting of stablecoin issuer licences (10 April 2026) (names Anchorpoint Financial Limited and HSBC as licensees, states that the HKMA maintains a Register of Licensed Stablecoin Issuers, and reminds the public to use regulated channels)
- ESMA: MiCA page and interim register (states the interim register is five CSV files, including one for issuers of e-money tokens, updated weekly; showed a last update of 9 September 2026 on the check date)
- CoinDesk: No, Ethena's USDe Didn't De-peg During Friday's Crash (13 October 2025) (a news report, not a primary source; the $0.65, $0.92 and within-1%-on-Curve figures come from it)