Federal regulators missed the GENIUS Act's one-year deadline on Jul. 18 without issuing a single final stablecoin rule, leaving issuers six months to prepare.
Key Points:
- Five federal agencies reached the statutory deadline with every major stablecoin rule package still sitting at the proposal stage.
- The law's January 2027 effective date does not move, which compresses the runway for companies planning to issue tokens.
- Fights over tokenized reserve assets and state supervision remain unresolved, with comment periods running into August.
GENIUS Act Rulemaking Stalls Across Five Agencies
Five federal bodies reached the anniversary of the law with draft text rather than binding regulation, agency filings showed, and none of the five had cleared the standard notice-and-comment process in time. Section 13 had directed the Treasury Department, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve and the National Credit Union Administration to finish the job within a year. Several packages were already out of reach, since a joint customer identification proposal stays open for comment through Aug. 21 and an FDIC anti-money laundering rule runs until Aug. 4.
President Donald Trump signed the measure on Jul. 18, 2025, and it set reserve, redemption, disclosure and licensing standards for payment stablecoin issuers. Congress attached no penalty for agencies that miss the rulemaking date, wrote no fallback timetable and left the statutory requirements fully intact.
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BlackRock And Kevin Warsh Shape The Delay
Agencies must still work through pointed objections from the firms they plan to supervise. BlackRock asked the OCC to scrap a possible 20% ceiling on tokenized reserve assets, arguing that credit quality and liquidity drive risk instead. The asset manager also wants written confirmation that qualifying Treasury exchange-traded funds can sit inside a reserve pool.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told House lawmakers on Jul. 14 that the central bank was racing to publish its share of the rules, and none had landed four days later.
State supervision is unsettled as well, and Treasury has not finalized the test for judging when a state regime is substantially similar to the federal one. That determination decides whether issuers with no more than $10 billion outstanding can remain under state watch, and New York has already proposed a framework built to clear the bar.
Stablecoin Compliance Clock Runs To January 2027
The missed date does not push back the framework itself. Under Section 20, the law binds issuers on the earlier of Jan. 18, 2027, or 120 days after primary federal regulators finalize their rules. The stablecoin market exceeded $300 billion by April, and companies must now rebuild reserves, redemption procedures and customer checks around language that can still change.
Lawmakers saw the miss coming a long way off. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., pressed agency officials in December to finish on schedule, citing past cases where regulators blew through congressionally mandated dates without consequence.
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