U.S. financial agencies have officially missed the established deadline for developing final regulations under the stablecoin law — the GENIUS Act. The key date — July 18 — has passed, but none of the responsible agencies have submitted final rules, limiting themselves only to drafts and collecting comments from market participants.
Let me remind you that the law, signed last year, mandated a number of entities — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve System (Fed), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and the Treasury Department — to develop implementation provisions exactly one year later. In practice, we are witnessing a classic bureaucratic stall.
What has already been published?
The OCC issued a comprehensive proposal in March covering reserve assets, capital, liquidity, and securities custody. The FDIC presented prudential standards in April, including deposit insurance for stablecoin reserves and tokenized deposits. The NCUA published rules on licensing and operational management in stages, with the comment period for the second package ending only on July 17 — one day before the deadline.
The Treasury Department has also not completed work on state-level regulatory principles, which are supposed to determine when local regimes are "substantially similar" to the federal one. In late June, the Fed and FinCEN, jointly with other agencies, put forward a proposal on customer identification, requiring issuers to verify sources of funds. Comments on this are open until August 21.
Consequences and prospects
Given the structure of American bureaucracy, at least several of the proposed rules will not be adopted before the end of this year. Agencies will need to consider numerous industry comments and simultaneously work on the provisions of the CLARITY Act. Notably, Congress did not provide for penalties for missing deadlines — this sets a dangerous precedent.
The missed deadline itself does not postpone the effective date of the GENIUS Act (January 18, 2027, or 120 days after the publication of final rules), but the prolonged process creates uncertainty for issuers. The banking lobby is already demanding the closure of loopholes in the ban on stablecoin yield, adding political tension.
My analysis: The U.S. stablecoin market is entering a phase of prolonged regulatory fog. The lack of clear deadlines and penalty mechanisms is a worrying signal. Investors and issuers should prepare for the final rules to appear no earlier than mid-2027, and possibly later. This could push some projects to migrate to more predictable jurisdictions, such as the EU or Singapore.