US regulators have missed the GENIUS Act's one-year deadline for issuing final stablecoin rules, The Block reported, leaving the country's federal framework for payment stablecoins without completed implementing regulations on the statutory timetable Congress prescribed.

The GENIUS Act — the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act — was signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 18, 2025, after passing the Senate in June and the House in July. The statute gave federal regulators a one-year window to finalize the regulations that operationalize its licensing, reserve and disclosure requirements for payment stablecoin issuers. That window has now closed without final rules in place, according to The Block's report.

The missed deadline matters because the GENIUS Act is a framework statute. Its substantive obligations for issuers — full backing of outstanding tokens with high-quality liquid reserves, monthly public disclosure of reserve composition, and restrictions on paying interest to stablecoin holders — take practical effect through the rulemaking process. Until final rules land, issuers and market participants operate without the regulatory certainty the legislation was designed to provide.

What does the missed deadline change in practice?

The lapse does not repeal or suspend the law. The GENIUS Act remains in force, and its prohibition on non-compliant issuance stands. But the delay pushes back the point at which market structure can fully reorganize around federal standards.

Key consequences follow from the delay:

• Licensing uncertainty persists. The Act creates dual federal and state pathways for issuers, with the Federal Reserve overseeing bank-based issuers and the OCC chartering non-bank federal issuers. Final rules are needed to define application procedures, capital standards and examination expectations.
• State-registered issuers face an unresolved threshold. The statute caps state-regulated issuance at $10 billion unless a state regime is certified as substantially similar to federal standards — a determination that depends on implementing rules.
• Foreign issuer access to US markets stays undefined. Comparable-jurisdiction determinations for offshore issuers require regulatory guidance that has not been finalized.
• Bank engagement with stablecoins remains cautious. Depository institutions weighing issuance or custody arrangements lack the final supervisory parameters they need to allocate compliance resources.

The agencies charged with implementation — the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — have been engaged in stablecoin policy work since before the Act passed. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom the Act designates as chair of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, has publicly supported rapid implementation of the stablecoin framework. Missing the statutory deadline does not indicate abandonment of the project; it reflects the ordinary friction of coordinating rulemaking across multiple independent banking agencies with overlapping jurisdictions.

Why the timeline slipped

Congressional statutes routinely set ambitious rulemaking deadlines that agencies miss, and stablecoin rules present an unusually complex coordination problem. The GENIUS Act divides authority among federal banking regulators, preserves a role for state supervisors through the dual-track system, and requires consultation with the President's Working Group on implementation strategy.

The comment process itself imposes a floor on timing. Proposed rules must be published for public comment, agencies must review and respond to submissions, and final rules must clear internal legal review at each agency. A one-year runway from signature to final rules left little margin for interagency negotiation, particularly on reserve eligibility and the treatment of existing state-regulated issuers such as those operating under New York's Department of Financial Services framework.

Market participants had already flagged the timing risk. Issuers preparing for federal compliance built reserve and reporting infrastructure against expected rule text, and several large trading and custody firms structured product roadmaps around the assumption that final rules would arrive within the statutory window.

What happens next

The practical question now shifts to sequencing. Regulators can release proposed rules, accept comments and finalize text in the coming months, with each proposed rule typically carrying a 30-to-60-day comment period before finalization. Issuers already operating under state regimes — including New York's limited-purpose trust framework — retain their existing authorization in the interim, but the path to scale beyond the $10 billion state threshold stays closed until federal certification standards exist.

The missed deadline also compresses the timeline for a related statutory task: Treasury's mandated study on whether stablecoin issuers should be permitted to pay interest, due to Congress within 18 months of enactment. With the rulemaking backlog growing, the interim period before final rules arrive will define how much of the US stablecoin market consolidates under federal charters — and how long state regimes remain the operative standard for dollar-pegged tokens.