U.S. regulators miss GENIUS Act stablecoin rules deadline before 2027 start

U.S. regulators missed the GENIUS Act’s one-year deadline to finalize key stablecoin rules, leaving major parts of the first federal framework for payment stablecoins still at the proposal stage even as the law remains in force and its Jan. 18, 2027 statutory backstop is unchanged. President Donald Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act into law on July 18, 2025, requiring agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Treasury Department and state regulators to complete implementing rules through notice-and-comment rulemaking within a year. Industry participants say the law has nonetheless improved legal clarity and encouraged adoption. Market capitalization for stablecoins has exceeded $300 billion, transaction volumes have risen roughly fourfold, and institutional activity has expanded, with Fidelity and Ripple obtaining charters and Tether launching its USA₮ product through Anchorage. Ashley Ebersole, co-founder and chief legal officer of tx and a former senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said stablecoin supply has grown by about $55 billion since the law took effect, while tokenized U.S. Treasury assets increased from roughly $3.9 billion to nearly $9 billion. The unfinished rules still matter for how stablecoins move through the banking system and how issuers, banks and payment firms will meet reserve, redemption, custody, disclosure, licensing, customer identification, anti-money laundering and sanctions requirements. Treasury has also not finalized guidance on when state stablecoin regimes qualify as “substantially similar” to the federal framework for issuers with no more than $10 billion in outstanding stablecoins. Industry attention is increasingly shifting to the proposed CLARITY Act, which backers say could provide broader digital-asset market structure rules and help banks and payment providers approve stablecoin-related services more quickly.