The US banking sector is increasingly involved in the cryptocurrency industry's key regulatory initiatives, with a coalition of bank trade associations recently petitioning the US Department of the Treasury to extend the public consultation period for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. In a letter addressed to the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the bankers are seeking an extension of the comment period for three separate GENIUS Act rule proposals, requesting a minimum of 60 days after the completion of another rulemaking effort by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC's rule for regulating stablecoin issuers has significant implications for other rules being developed by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as well as a related rulemaking at the FDIC. The bankers argue that all these efforts are 'directly contingent on the OCC's final framework' and collectively represent a regulatory endeavor of unprecedented scope and complexity.
The banking organizations, including the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute, emphasize that their comments 'will necessarily be more comprehensive, and therefore more useful to the agencies, if we have sufficient time to evaluate the proposed rules together and to evaluate each against the finalized OCC framework.' The GENIUS Act is scheduled to be implemented by 2027, although it is not uncommon for federal agencies to grant extensions for complex rules. The Treasury Department has not yet responded to a request for comment on the bank industry's request. Meanwhile, the same bankers are also engaged in a debate with the crypto industry over stablecoin regulation, which has already led to delays in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and may potentially jeopardize its passage this year.