GENIUS Act issuance rule comments close as clock ticks

The public comment period on Treasury's GENIUS Act issuance rule closes on Monday, Oct. 19, starting the last stretch before the 2025 stablecoin law takes effect. The proposal sets out which firms can create dollar stablecoins for U.S. users and when exchanges must drop coins from everyone else.

What happened

Treasury published the notice of proposed rulemaking on Aug. 18 as FR Doc. 2026-16796 under docket TREAS-DO-2026-0496. The Federal Register page shows 105 comments received so far, a modest tally for a rule that decides which coins can be sold on U.S. platforms, and comments must arrive on or before Oct. 19.

The rule implements section 3 of the Act, which the notice says sets out "the fundamental architecture of the payment stablecoin market in the United States." Under section 3(a), only permitted issuers may create payment stablecoins in the U.S. A person who knowingly joins a breach faces fines of up to $1 million for each violation and as long as five years in prison.

Section 3(b) turns to intermediaries. Starting July 18, 2028, three years after enactment, exchanges and other digital asset service providers lose the right to sell U.S. customers any payment stablecoin that did not come from a permitted issuer. A separate clause on foreign issuers applies from the Act's effective date and bars offering their coins unless the issuer can and will comply with lawful U.S. orders.

Why it matters

This is where the law stops being abstract for trading venues. Exchanges that list offshore dollar tokens will need either a compliant foreign issuer or a plan to delist before the deadlines. Treasury's notice says section 3 is intended to have extraterritorial effect when a coin is sold to someone in the United States.

Timing raises the stakes, and gov.house says the Treasury rule carries the hardest clock of the three dockets. The GENIUS Act takes effect on Jan. 18, 2027, whether or not this rule is final, according to gov.house. With the Senate having blocked the CLARITY market-structure bill 49-50, crypto rules are now being written one agency docket at a time. Treasury has already set out its approach to state stablecoin certification.

The GENIUS Act issuance rule also shapes the business model of bank-backed coins. Only an approved subsidiary of an insured depository institution, a federal qualified issuer or a state qualified issuer can be a permitted issuer, which favors players that already have charters or state licenses.

What's next

Two more windows close on Tuesday, for the SEC's planned crypto offering regime and a CFTC inquiry into compute derivatives, both covered in our SEC crypto offering rules explainer. The CFTC request uses the hourly rental price of a B200 chip as its example underlier. The SEC plan would create an exemption for raising up to $75 million in any 12-month period and a safe harbor that could take some tokens outside the definition of a security. After that, Treasury must review the record and decide what to finalize, while the foreign-issuer clause applies from the effective date regardless.

Watch for whether Treasury softens the foreign-issuer clause or adds transition relief for exchanges. The final GENIUS Act issuance rule will decide which stablecoins U.S. users can still buy on regulated platforms in 2027 and 2028.