<p>The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has issued new guidelines for stablecoins, including Facebook’s planned cryptocurrency Libra.</p> <p>The regulator <a href="https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2019/09/20190911-mm-stable-coins/?pk_campaign=News-Service&amp;pk_kwd=FINMA%20publishes%20%E2%80%98stable%20coin%E2%80%99%20guidelines">announced </a>Wednesday that it <a href="https://www.finma.ch/en/~/media/finma/dokumente/dokumentencenter/myfinma/1bewilligung/fintech/wegleitung-stable-coins.pdf?la=en&amp;hash=70408DDE78369718148808FD4784E742373A0140">classifies stablecoins</a> under the existing approach of blockchain-based tokens, and that rules for stablecoins may differ depending on which assets they are backed by, i.e. currencies, commodities, real estate or securities.</p> <p>“The concrete design of ‘stable coins’ can vary greatly in legal, technical, functional and economic terms. Therefore, no fully generic classification is possible,” FINMA said, adding: “Money laundering, securities trading, banking, fund management and financial infrastructure regulation can all be of relevance.”</p> <p>For Facebook’s Libra, FINMA said the services planned by the project would “clearly go beyond those of a pure payment system and therefore be subject to [...] additional requirements.” Earlier today, the Libra Association <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/39286/facebooks-libra-seeks-payment-system-license-from-swiss-regulator/">announced</a> that it is looking to get a payment system license from the regulator. </p> <p>FINMA has provided the following “indicative” categorization for supervising various stablecoins:<br /> <img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-39303" src="https://www.tbstat.com/wp/uploads/2019/09/finma2-800x389.png" alt="" width="800" height="389" /><br /> <span style="font-size: 8pt;">Source: FINMA</span></p>