Banking Regulator Races to Finalize GENIUS Act Stablecoin Rules - Decrypt

In brief

• OCC head Jonathan Gould said Wednesday the agency will finalize its GENIUS Act stablecoin rules by November, racing to meet a Jan. 18 statutory deadline before the law takes effect in January 2027 after blowing past an earlier July target.
• The 376-page proposal, released in February and open for comment through May, covers the full life cycle of a payment stablecoin—reserves, redemption at par, liquidity, risk management, audits, custody and wind-downs.
• Gould said the OCC expects to begin processing issuer applications in 2027 and reported an eightfold jump in digital-asset chartering activity versus the Biden administration.

The top U.S. banking regulator says it will finalize its rules for stablecoin issuers by November, moving to beat a fast-approaching deadline for the country's landmark digital-dollar law.

Jonathan Gould, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, laid out the timeline Wednesday at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, an event hosted by SALT in Jackson. He said the agency is working at a rapid pace and expects to publish a final rule by November as it weighs feedback gathered from the crypto industry.

“We are very intent on moving quickly and getting a final rule out by November so that we will be able to start processing applications within the new year,” Gould said.

The rules will implement the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework President Donald Trump signed in July 2025. The law tasks federal regulators with writing the details governing payment stablecoins, and it takes effect in January 2027. Agencies face a statutory deadline of Jan. 18 to have regulations in place, and the OCC has already blown past an earlier July target, a slip that has fed concern about lingering regulatory uncertainty.

The OCC's proposal, a 376-page draft released in February and opened for public comment through May, covers the full life cycle of a payment stablecoin. The framework spells out requirements for reserve assets, redemption at par, liquidity, risk management, audits, custody and supervision, along with the process for winding down a failed issuer. Anti-money-laundering and sanctions requirements were carved out into separate rulemaking coordinated with the Treasury Department.

Gould said the agency expects to begin processing applications from stablecoin issuers starting in 2027. He also pointed to a surge of interest in federal oversight, saying digital-asset chartering activity has jumped eightfold compared with the Biden administration, and he criticized the prior administration's approach to crypto risk as shortsighted.

The stakes for the industry are steep. Under the GENIUS Act, only permitted issuers will be able to offer payment stablecoins to Americans, and Treasury has separately proposed rules that would bar platforms from selling noncompliant stablecoins to U.S. customers once the law's provisions kick in.

The OCC did not lay out a firm date within November for the final rule.

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