The U.S. Treasury on Monday proposed the first major rules under the GENIUS Act. The move opens a 60-day comment window on definitions and licensing for payment stablecoin issuers.
The notice of proposed rulemaking addresses Section 3 of the stablecoin law President Donald Trump signed in July 2025. That signing produced the first significant federal crypto legislation. The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act takes effect Jan. 18, 2027. Treasury already missed a one-year target to finalize implementing rules by July.
The proposal is posted to regulations.gov as document TREAS-DO-2026-0496-0001. It asks the public and industry to weigh in on dozens of questions about how to interpret the statute. Comments close 60 days after the proposal appears in the Federal Register. That deadline lands in mid-October, according to CoinDesk.
Two questions anchor the NPRM. First: when a stablecoin counts as “issued” in the United States. Second: when an issuer or service provider counts as offering or selling a payment stablecoin to a U.S. person. Draw those lines and you determine which foreign issuers, Tether included, fall under U.S. supervision.
The law is blunt on licensing. Entities generally may not issue payment stablecoins in the U.S. without an appropriate federal or state license, The Block reported. A separate restriction arrives later. Beginning July 18, 2028, digital asset service providers generally will not be permitted to offer or sell payment stablecoins to people in the U.S. unless the tokens come from a licensed issuer.
Foreign-issued stablecoins face their own test. The proposal restricts offering or selling them unless the foreign issuer can comply with U.S. legal orders and applicable reciprocal arrangements. The carve-out matters. The largest stablecoins by circulation are issued offshore.
Treasury said it studied established securities law as a reference point, citing “longstanding legal regimes that address the issue, offer, and sale of other financial instruments, such as securities, including offshore activities.” The proposal text pushes back on importing those rules wholesale. It states that “application of traditional investment rules to payment stablecoins may frustrate” Congress’s intent for them to function as a cross-border means of payment.
That tension between securities precedent and the statute’s payment-rail framing is what the comment period is likely to turn on.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that the administration is “moving quickly to implement that framework.” In a statement, Bessent said Treasury “welcomes input from stakeholders as we work to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America, cement the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and keep America the crypto capital of the world.”
The NPRM builds on an advance notice of proposed rulemaking Treasury issued in September 2025. Other agencies have moved in parallel. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve Board all issued proposed rules this year tied to GENIUS implementation, according to Cointelegraph.
Every one of those departments reportedly missed the 120-day deadline to finalize regulations before January. The statute could take effect without complete guidance in place. CoinDesk reported that finalizing every rule by Jan. 18, 2027 is unlikely, and that new regulations typically come with transition runways.
Congress is still arguing over pieces of the law itself. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would rewrite portions of the GENIUS Act, particularly the treatment of rewards programs for stablecoin customers on exchanges. It failed to begin key votes before the Senate’s August recess.
On the international front, the UK-U.S. Financial Regulatory Working Group met in London in July. The talks covered cooperation between the two countries’ financial agencies, including implementation of the GENIUS Act.
