GENIUS Waits: Feds Blow One-Year Deadline, Leave Stablecoin Rulebook Unfinished 🕰️

US regulatory agencies failed to meet Saturday's rulemaking deadline under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, leaving the federal stablecoin framework without finalized regulations one year after the law was signed. The missed deadline does not invalidate the statute, but it leaves stablecoin issuers operating in regulatory limbo as several agencies still have work to complete.

The Department of the Treasury, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board all missed the cutoff, according to rulemaking trackers maintained by law firm Chapman and crypto investment company Paradigm. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) was also among the agencies with unfinished work.

Since President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, the agencies collectively issued 10 notices of proposed rulemaking. Treasury led with four proposals addressing state regulatory regimes, foreign issuer registration and anti-money laundering compliance. The OCC released two NPRMs covering nationally chartered payment stablecoin issuers, approval requirements and supervisory standards, while the FDIC published one focused on supervised institutions that issue payment stablecoins, including reserve management expectations. The NCUA proposed rules permitting federally insured credit unions to participate in stablecoin issuance, and federal banking agencies jointly advanced an interagency implementation rule to harmonize oversight across the OCC, Federal Reserve and FDIC.

Federally chartered crypto bank Anchorage Digital used the anniversary to push for a second piece of legislation, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY), which cleared the Senate Banking Committee and would create the first federal regulatory framework for digital assets more broadly. "On GENIUS' one-year anniversary, we're renewing our call for Congress to pass the CLARITY Act and extend the clear market-structure rules that worked for stablecoins to the broader digital asset economy," the bank wrote in a Friday report. The CLARITY Act's path through the full Congress remains pending.