US regulators miss GENIUS Act's one-year deadline for final stablecoin rules

Quick Take

• The Treasury Department and the four primary federal stablecoin regulators reached the GENIUS Act's July 18 rulemaking deadline without a final set of implementing regulations.
• Several major proposals remain unfinished: comments on a joint customer identification rule are open until Aug. 21, while an FDIC anti-money laundering proposal remains open until Aug. 4.
• The delay does not postpone the law's Jan. 18, 2027 effective date, leaving regulators and prospective stablecoin issuers with a compressed implementation window.

U.S. regulators reached the GENIUS Act's one-year rulemaking deadline on Saturday without issuing the final regulations needed to fully implement the country's new federal stablecoin framework.

As of Saturday afternoon, the principal rule packages issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) and Treasury Department remained proposals. Other rules involving the Federal Reserve and federal anti-money laundering authorities are also unfinished, with some still open for public comment.

President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act, or the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, into law on July 18, 2025, marking the first major standalone federal crypto framework to clear Congress. The law established reserve, redemption, disclosure, licensing and supervisory requirements for payment stablecoin issuers.

Section 13 of the enacted statute directed each primary federal payment stablecoin regulator --- the OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC and NCUA --- along with the Treasury secretary and each state stablecoin regulator, to promulgate implementing regulations through notice-and-comment rulemaking no later than one year after enactment.

The law does not say that missing the deadline automatically extends it, suspends the statutory requirements or postpones the broader framework's effective date.

Major rules remain at the proposal stage

The OCC published its broad implementing proposal in the Federal Register on March 2, covering reserve assets, capital, liquidity, custody, risk management, reporting and other requirements for issuers under its jurisdiction. The Block reported on the proposal when the agency first released it in February.

The FDIC followed with a prudential standards proposal covering reserves, capital, redemption, custody and risk management for stablecoin issuers owned by institutions under its supervision. The proposal also addresses the deposit-insurance treatment of stablecoin reserves and tokenized deposits, as The Block previously reported.

The NCUA issued a licensing proposal in February and a broader operational and risk-management proposal in May. Comments on the second package closed Friday, one day before the statutory deadline, making completion of that rule by July 18 impossible through the normal notice-and-comment process.

Treasury's proposed state-regulation principles also remain unfinished. The proposal would determine when a state framework is "substantially similar" to the federal regime, allowing qualifying issuers with no more than $10 billion in outstanding stablecoins to remain under state supervision, as The Block reported in April.

The Federal Reserve, FinCEN, OCC, FDIC and NCUA jointly issued a customer identification proposal requiring issuers to verify primary-market customers and maintain related records. Comments remain open through Aug. 21. The Block previously reported that five Fed governors backed releasing the proposal, while Chair Kevin Warsh abstained.

Separately, an FDIC proposal covering Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions compliance remains open for comments through Aug. 4. FinCEN and the Office of Foreign Assets Control have also proposed broader anti-money laundering, reporting and sanctions requirements for permitted issuers.

Those schedules ensure that at least some rules needed to operate the framework will not be finalized until after the one-year deadline.

Substantive issues unresolved

The agencies must also work through extensive industry feedback before completing their rules.

BlackRock, for example, urged the OCC to abandon a possible 20% cap on tokenized reserve assets, explicitly confirm that qualifying Treasury exchange-traded funds may be used as reserves and expand the eligible asset list to include certain floating-rate Treasury notes, as The Block previously reported.

Lawmakers had warned regulators about the approaching deadline months earlier. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., pressed agency officials in December to complete their GENIUS Act rules on time, noting that regulators have sometimes failed to implement legislation by congressionally mandated dates.

Questions surrounding state oversight are also unresolved. A bipartisan group of senators urged Treasury in June to preserve states' regulatory role, arguing that Treasury's proposal left uncertainty around the certification process and its timing.

New York's Department of Financial Services has meanwhile proposed its own GENIUS-aligned framework, adding reserve concentration limits and other requirements in an effort to meet the federal "substantially similar" standard. The absence of final federal rules means New York and other states may still have to revise their frameworks before seeking certification.

A shorter runway, not a later start

The missed deadline does not, by itself, push back the GENIUS Act's effective date.

Under Section 20, the law takes effect on the earlier of Jan. 18, 2027 (18 months after enactment) or 120 days after the primary federal regulators issue final implementing rules. Rules finalized after Sept. 20 could no longer move the date forward, since their 120-day window would end on Jan. 18 or later.

Congress did not spell out a penalty or alternative timetable if agencies failed to finish those rules within a year. For now, issuers are left preparing around proposals that could still change before becoming binding.

Much of the framework is already written into the law. Issuers must maintain one-to-one reserves in eligible liquid assets, publish redemption policies and monthly reserve disclosures, and refrain from paying holders interest or yield directly. The pending rules will fill in how regulators apply and enforce those requirements.

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