Stablecoin issuers get no rulebook one year after GENIUS Act signing

US regulators let the rulemaking deadline under the GENIUS Act pass this weekend without issuing a single final rule. Saturday marked exactly one year since President Trump signed the law establishing the first federal framework for stablecoins, and the agencies tasked with writing its operating rules have nothing finished to show for it.

What the trackers show

The Treasury Department, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board all published proposed rules and took public comment over the past year. None converted a proposal into a final rule before the deadline, according to rulemaking trackers kept by law firm Chapman and crypto investment firm Paradigm. Four separate agencies, four sets of proposals, zero final regulations. That's the count that matters here, not the calendar date.

Missing a statutory deadline doesn't undo the law. The GENIUS Act stays on the books and stablecoin issuers still operate under whatever interim guidance exists. But "proposed" is not "binding," and issuers building compliance programs around draft language have no guarantee the final text won't shift under them.

The read

A law with teeth needs agencies that actually finish their homework. The GENIUS Act was sold as the moment US stablecoin regulation caught up to the market's size, and the market didn't wait: issuers have kept minting, exchanges have kept listing, and volumes haven't paused for anyone's rulemaking calendar. What's stalled is the part meant to give the industry certainty, capital requirements, reserve standards, licensing mechanics, the stuff banks and issuers actually need to plan around.

Four agencies missing one deadline in unison isn't a fluke of scheduling. It signals that turning a statute into workable rules across Treasury, the OCC, the FDIC and the Fed simultaneously is harder than the one-year timeline assumed, or that nobody wanted to be first to lock in language the others might contradict. Either way, the practical effect is the same: issuers are still operating on proposed rules that could still change, a year after the deadline that was supposed to end that ambiguity.

This lands right as governments elsewhere are moving in the opposite direction on crypto oversight. France ordered ISPs to block Polymarket this week over gambling law violations, and Europe just added 14 firms to its MiCA register in a second post-deadline licensing round. The EU is issuing licenses under its framework while the US hasn't finished writing its own rulebook for the asset class it claims to have solved first.

What to watch

Watch whether Treasury or the Fed issues the first final rule in the next quarter, and whether it matches the comment-period drafts or gets rewritten. A final rule that departs meaningfully from what issuers built toward would be its own kind of disruption, arguably worse than the current wait. The agency that moves first sets the template the others likely follow, so that first move is the one to track.