The American Bankers Association today joined three banking sector associations in requesting that the Treasury Department and FDIC tie the public comment period for three proposed rules to implement the Genius Act to the issuance of a final rule on the matter by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The OCC will be the primary regulator of nonbank stablecoin issuers under the Genius Act. Earlier this year, the agency proposed rulemaking to implement the law, which has yet to be finalized. The associations requested that the Treasury Department and FDIC extend the comment deadlines for their rules to 60 days after the OCC issues its final rule. The three proposals are:
- A Treasury Department rule for determining whether a state’s regulatory regime is substantially similar to the federal regulatory regime, so that stablecoin issuers can be regulated by the state
- A FDIC rule on requirements and standards for agency-regulated stablecoin issuers and banks.
- A joint Financial Crimes Enforcement Network/Office of Foreign Assets Control rule on anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance for stablecoin issuers. Both agencies are part of the Treasury Department.
The three proposed rules are “substantively tethered to the OCC’s proposed rule,” the associations said.
“Our comments on any one of the Genius Act [proposed rules] 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,” they said. “A fragmented comment process with staggered, compressed deadlines across interdependent proposals will undermine the agencies’ own stated goal of regulatory consistency across the Genius Act implementation framework.”
