Optimal Control of Reserve Asset Portfolios for Stablecoins

Fuente: arXiv
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1. Verfasser: Hammerl, Alexander
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Hammerl, Alexander
author_facet Hammerl, Alexander
contents Stablecoins promise par convertibility, yet issuers must balance immediate liquidity against yield on reserves to keep the peg credible. We study this treasury problem as a continuous-time control task with two instruments: reallocating reserves between cash and short-duration government bills, and setting a spread fee for either minting or burning the coin. Mint and redemption flows follow mutually exciting processes that reproduce clustered order flow. Peg deviations arise when immediate cash coverage is insufficient relative to outstanding supply, and the market price relaxes toward this liquidity-coverage fair value. We develop a stochastic model predictive control framework that incorporates moment closure for event intensities. Using Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, we show that the optimal reallocation control exhibits a soft-thresholding structure: no rebalancing occurs when the shadow-cost differential lies within a deadzone set by transaction costs, and reallocation scales linearly beyond that threshold up to a capacity-imposed saturation limit. Introducing settlement windows leads to a sampled-data implementation with a simple threshold (soft-thresholding) structure for rebalancing. We also establish a monotone stress-response property: as expected outflows intensify or windows lengthen, the optimal policy shifts predictably toward cash. In simulations covering various stress test scenarios, the controller preserves most bill carry in calm markets, builds cash quickly when stress emerges, and avoids unnecessary rotations under transitory signals. The proposed policy is implementation-ready and aligns naturally with operational cut-offs. Our results translate empirical flow risk into auditable treasury rules that improve peg quality without sacrificing avoidable carry.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_09429
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Control of Reserve Asset Portfolios for Stablecoins
Hammerl, Alexander
Portfolio Management
Stablecoins promise par convertibility, yet issuers must balance immediate liquidity against yield on reserves to keep the peg credible. We study this treasury problem as a continuous-time control task with two instruments: reallocating reserves between cash and short-duration government bills, and setting a spread fee for either minting or burning the coin. Mint and redemption flows follow mutually exciting processes that reproduce clustered order flow. Peg deviations arise when immediate cash coverage is insufficient relative to outstanding supply, and the market price relaxes toward this liquidity-coverage fair value. We develop a stochastic model predictive control framework that incorporates moment closure for event intensities. Using Pontryagin's Maximum Principle, we show that the optimal reallocation control exhibits a soft-thresholding structure: no rebalancing occurs when the shadow-cost differential lies within a deadzone set by transaction costs, and reallocation scales linearly beyond that threshold up to a capacity-imposed saturation limit. Introducing settlement windows leads to a sampled-data implementation with a simple threshold (soft-thresholding) structure for rebalancing. We also establish a monotone stress-response property: as expected outflows intensify or windows lengthen, the optimal policy shifts predictably toward cash. In simulations covering various stress test scenarios, the controller preserves most bill carry in calm markets, builds cash quickly when stress emerges, and avoids unnecessary rotations under transitory signals. The proposed policy is implementation-ready and aligns naturally with operational cut-offs. Our results translate empirical flow risk into auditable treasury rules that improve peg quality without sacrificing avoidable carry.
title Optimal Control of Reserve Asset Portfolios for Stablecoins
topic Portfolio Management
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09429