BIS: Major crypto ‘earn’ accounts act like uninsured deposits

The Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Institute published a report in April 2026 saying large crypto platforms now run ‘earn’ accounts that function like uninsured bank deposits. The report was authored by Denise Garcia Ocampo of the BIS and Peter Goodrich and Gian-Piero Lovicu of the Financial Stability Board.

The report examines multifunction crypto asset intermediaries, or MCIs, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, Bybit, MEXC and OKX. These firms have expanded from spot trading and custody to offer yield-bearing earn accounts, margin lending, derivatives and token issuance. The paper notes the total crypto asset market was about $3 trillion at the end of 2025 and estimates the top five MCIs served between 200 million and 230 million users.

Researchers found that many earn products transfer legal ownership of deposited crypto to the platform. Platforms typically pool deposits and redeploy them across lending, market-making and decentralized finance, while paying users a variable yield. Because customers surrender ownership, they become unsecured creditors of the platform rather than protected depositors. The structure creates short-term redeemable liabilities backed by longer-duration or less liquid assets, a form of maturity and liquidity transformation.

The report cites past collapses and market stress. It recounts Celsius Network’s 2022 run, when net withdrawals exceeded $1.4 billion between May and June, the platform froze withdrawals on June 12 and filed for bankruptcy on July 12. Court filings showed a roughly $1 billion deficit and confirmed earn users as general unsecured creditors. The paper also describes an October 10 crash, when crypto prices fell sharply over about 30 minutes, triggering automated liquidations and reported direct losses of roughly $19 billion the following day. During that event Binance experienced an operational outage, three tokens used as margin collateral temporarily lost their pegs, and the exchange later provided $283 million in customer compensation.

A review of terms and conditions from eight major MCIs between November 2025 and March 2026 found most earn products give platforms full discretion over deposited assets, allow commingling of customer funds and reserve the right to suspend redemptions without notice. The report also highlights high leverage on derivatives as an additional risk, noting some platforms permit retail customers up to 150-to-1 margin and drawing a link between leverage and the October 2025 liquidation cascade.

On regulation, the report references a 2025 Financial Stability Board review of 28 jurisdictions that found only 11 had finalized frameworks addressing financial stability risks from crypto intermediaries. Two of those frameworks covered borrowing and lending by MCIs and three covered earn products. The authors note many large MCIs split functions across dozens of legal entities in multiple countries and that formal supervisory information-sharing agreements between regulators are uncommon.

The report recommends applying prudential capital and liquidity requirements, governance standards, stress testing and consolidated supervision at the group level. It advises using a mix of entity-based and activity-based regulation to address funding and liquidity risks and calls for greater cross-border cooperation to close supervisory gaps created by the global structure of large crypto platforms.