The US Treasury unveils its proposal to regulate stablecoins

A missed deadline, a rule that arrives anyway. The US Treasury Department has just published its first major proposal to bring to life the GENIUS Act, the law that regulates the issuance of stablecoins in the United States. The text sets out federal definitions of what it means to issue an American stablecoin, and who must comply with them. Problem: the law required the administration to finalize its application rules one year after its entry into force, a deadline that expired last month without anything coming out. Better a late rule than a botched rule, the Treasury seems to be saying.

The Treasury finally sets out its definitions, between securities law and payment logic

The text, published on Regulations.gov, relied on existing stock market law as a benchmark, without wanting to assimilate stablecoins to it. The Treasury explains it in black and white in its proposal: applying the classic rules of investment to payment stablecoins would risk thwarting the very objective of the law, which sees in these tokens a settlement and payment tool, including cross-border, rather than a financial product like any other.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent justified the move on Monday in an official statement, saying he wanted to provide companies with the regulatory certainty necessary to innovate, consolidate the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and maintain the United States as the crypto capital of the world.

Public consultation until mid-October, including the fate of Tether

This proposal follows the prior notice published by the Treasury in September 2025. The public and the stablecoin issuer industry now have 60 days to comment on the text, with a deadline set in mid-October, before several additional months of review before the final rule. The document asks dozens of open questions about how best to interpret the law, each of which must be answered before the final green light.

The industry will closely monitor the fate of foreign issuers, starting with Tether, which remains the sector heavyweight with stablecoin USDT worth around $189 billion in the first quarter of 2026 according to CoinGecko. For these offshore players, everything will depend on a comparability decision that the Treasury has still not made at this stage, and which will condition their legal access to the American market. The next legal deadline, that of the entry into effective application of the law, falls on January 18. There is little chance that all of the rules will be finalized in time, which will likely leave the industry with a transition period before the complete changeover.