U.S. Treasury Proposes First Major GENIUS Act Stablecoin Rules

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has published its first substantive proposal to implement the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, setting out federal definitions of what it means to issue a stablecoin and which entities fall under the law’s remit. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the move as part of an effort to deliver regulatory certainty for businesses, reinforce the dollar’s reserve-currency status, and position the United States as a leading crypto jurisdiction.

The proposal arrives after the law’s one-year implementation deadline lapsed last month, meaning banking and markets regulators are already behind the statutory timetable. The next hard marker is the law’s effective date, set for 18 January, and full rulemaking completion by then is widely considered unlikely given that dozens of interpretive questions embedded in the proposal still require answers, a 60-day public comment window runs to mid-October, and a further review period follows before any final rule can be signed off.

Treasury signals it approached stablecoins as a genuinely new category rather than shoehorning them into existing securities frameworks, though it drew on securities law as a reference point. The proposal explicitly states that applying traditional investment rules to payment stablecoins could undermine their function as a cross-border payment and settlement mechanism. Industry participants will scrutinise in particular how the rule treats foreign issuers such as Tether, whose status under the GENIUS Act remains unresolved. Complicating the picture further, Congress is simultaneously working on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which would revise parts of GENIUS, though that bill stalled before key votes earlier in August and the Senate has since gone into recess.