#GENIUSImplementationRulesDraftReleased

The GENIUS Act's implementation machinery is now in full motion — and it's moving faster than most people expected.

After being signed into law, the Act handed Treasury, the OCC, and the FDIC each a slice of the rulemaking pie. What's now hitting the table are the proposed rules that will determine exactly how stablecoin issuers get licensed, capitalized, and supervised in the United States.

The OCC dropped its proposed rules in early March 2026. The core of it: federal qualified payment stablecoin issuers fall exclusively under OCC supervision, which actually cuts through a lot of the historically messy state-vs-federal overlap. On capital requirements, the OCC took a notably cautious approach — no standardized minimums yet, because stablecoin business models are still evolving. Instead, they'll evaluate issuers case by case, focusing primarily on operational risk rather than the credit or market risk frameworks that traditional banks deal with.

The FDIC followed with its own proposed rulemaking, aimed specifically at state nonmember banks and savings associations that want to issue payment stablecoins through subsidiaries. Those entities now need to formally apply to the FDIC for a subsidiary to be approved as a permitted payment stablecoin issuer.

Treasury holds arguably the most consequential pen in the room. It's responsible for defining when a state regime is "substantially similar" to the federal framework — a determination that decides whether state-chartered issuers can operate without going federal. It's also the one deciding which foreign countries' regulatory systems are comparable enough to allow foreign-issued stablecoins into U.S. markets.

What this means practically: the window for stablecoin issuers to operate in a regulatory gray zone is closing. The compliance architecture being built here mirrors banking regulation in depth — AML, sanctions compliance, customer due diligence, reserve asset rules. Anyone serious about issuing a payment stablecoin in the U.S. is now looking at a real licensing process, not just a legal opinion and a whitepaper.

The comment periods on these proposed rules are where the industry's real lobbying battle is being fought right now.