Regulators Miss GENIUS Act Deadline for Final Stablecoin Rules

U.S. regulators reached the GENIUS Act’s one-year rulemaking deadline on Saturday without issuing the final regulations required to operate the new federal stablecoin framework. The principal proposals from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration and the Treasury Department remain unfinalized.

President Donald Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act on July 18, 2025. The law set federal requirements for payment stablecoin issuers covering reserves, redemption, disclosures, licensing and supervision. Section 13 directed primary federal regulators and state stablecoin regulators to complete notice-and-comment rulemaking within one year of enactment.

The OCC published a broad implementing proposal in March addressing eligible reserve assets, capital and liquidity requirements, custody rules, risk management and reporting obligations for issuers it would supervise. The FDIC released a prudential standards proposal that covers reserves, capital, redemption, custody and risk management for institutions it supervises and outlines how stablecoin reserves and tokenized deposits could be treated for deposit insurance purposes.

The NCUA issued a licensing proposal in February and a broader operational and risk-management package in May. Comments on the May package closed the day before the statutory deadline, which prevented completion of a final rule through the normal notice-and-comment process by July 18. Treasury circulated proposed principles for state regulation that would define when a state framework is “substantially similar” to the federal regime and allow issuers with up to $10 billion in outstanding stablecoins to remain under state supervision; that proposal remains unfinished.

Several cross-agency rulemakings are still pending. The Federal Reserve, FinCEN, OCC, FDIC and NCUA jointly proposed a customer identification rule that would require issuers to verify primary-market customers and retain records; the comment period for that proposal runs through Aug. 21. An FDIC proposal on Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions compliance is open through Aug. 4. FinCEN and the Office of Foreign Assets Control have circulated broader anti-money-laundering, reporting and sanctions proposals for permitted issuers.

Market participants have submitted technical feedback on reserve-asset limits, eligibility of Treasury exchange-traded funds and certain floating-rate Treasury notes. Lawmakers asked agencies to meet the statutory timetable, and a bipartisan group of senators sought clarity from Treasury on the role of states and the certification process. New York’s Department of Financial Services has proposed its own GENIUS-aligned framework with reserve concentration limits and other requirements that may need revision once federal rules are final.

Missing the one-year deadline does not automatically change the GENIUS Act’s effective date. Under Section 20, the statute becomes effective on the earlier of Jan. 18, 2027 or 120 days after primary federal regulators issue final implementing rules. Congress did not specify penalties or an alternate schedule if agencies did not complete rulemaking within a year.

Several baseline requirements are already set in the statute: issuers must hold one-to-one reserves in eligible liquid assets, publish redemption policies and monthly reserve disclosures, and refrain from directly paying holders interest or yield. The outstanding rulemakings will determine how those statutory obligations are applied, supervised and enforced, and will provide the operational details market participants must follow.