# Stablecoins and deposit tokens

Banks issue two shapes of regulated money on SQRL: payment stablecoins, fully reserved claims transferable to any whitelisted holder, and deposit tokens, transfer-restricted bank liabilities held only by the issuer's customers or consortium members. Both use the same token standard and the same issuer controls: screening, authorised-participant redemption, and circulating supply checked against attested reserves at every block.

> Part of the SQRL documentation, section "Protocol".
> Rendered page: https://docs.sqrl.tech/protocol/tokens/stablecoins

Issuers run their stablecoin from [SQRL Enterprise](/enterprise/assets). This page explains the moving parts and where each one is enforced.

## The token

The asset is an SCL contract on [the SQRL token standard](/protocol/tokens/token-standard), administered by a quorum vault, with a hard supply cap, separated minter, burner, pauser and compliance roles, a whitelist, and reason-coded freeze, clawback and pause. Nothing about the token depends on SQRL's servers: its rules are enforced by the contract and its admin is a Bitcoin multi-signature script.

A deposit token can run on the canonical ledger or inside the issuing bank's own [subnet](/protocol/network/subnets). On a subnet, holders and balances stay on the bank's firewalled infrastructure, and the network sees only state-root commitments anchored to Bitcoin. The contract, its controls and its replay rules are identical either way.

## Controls, and where they run

| Control | Enforced by | When |
|---|---|---|
| Quorum approval | Bitcoin (the vault's script) | Every administrative action and every movement out of a vault |
| Supply cap | The contract | Every mint |
| Whitelist | The contract (holders) and SQRL Enterprise (recipients) | Every transfer and mint |
| Freeze, clawback, pause | The contract | On a compliance officer's quorum-signed call |
| Sanctions screening | SQRL Enterprise, through the issuer's provider (TRM Labs, Chainalysis or Elliptic) | Before a mint or transfer becomes a transaction |
| Travel Rule | SQRL Enterprise | Transfers at and above the issuer's threshold |
| Maker-checker | SQRL Enterprise role separation | Every action type |

## Mint and redeem

Authorised participants (APs) are the institutions an issuer allows to create and redeem tokens directly. A mint request is fulfilled when the AP's fiat payment reaches the issuer's bank; a redemption pays fiat out once the tokens are burned. The on-chain half is an ordinary quorum-signed mint or burn call, linked to the request by its `redemption_ref`. A request completes only when both legs have cleared. See [Redemption](/enterprise/redemption).

## Supply against attested reserves

Circulating supply is recomputed from the chain at every block and compared with the issuer's reserve attestation feed. Supply is proven; reserves are attested by the issuer. Coverage is published per asset, auditors read the same data through the auditor API, and regulators get read-only access. A divergence beyond tolerance raises an alert to the compliance role. See [Reserves and attestation](/enterprise/reserves).

## Supervision

Issuer contracts expose observer roles: designated keys with read access to holder lists, balances and event history. A supervisor's observer node replays the instruments it regulates from public anchors. See [Subnets and routing](/protocol/network/subnets).

  Supply is a fact on Bitcoin, controls are rules in the contract, and every issuer action leaves a reason-coded public event. A stablecoin on SQRL can be audited from the chain up.