The cryptocurrency industry often finds bankers involved in its most important regulatory efforts, and this time, a coalition of banking industry associations asked the U.S. Treasury Department to extend the window for public participation in the implementation of last year’s U.S. Stablecoin Guidance and Establishing a National Innovation Act.
In a letter this week to the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, U.S. Bankers asked for an extension to the comment period on three different Genius Act rule proposals until at least 60 days after another rule work (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) is completed. The OCC’s push to implement rules governing stablecoin issuers has important implications for the outcome of other rules pursued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as well as related rulemaking by the FDIC.
Bankers believe all efforts are “directly dependent on the OCC’s final framework.” These collective efforts “represent a series of regulatory efforts of extraordinary scale and complexity,” in addition to regulatory recommendations yet to be made by the Federal Reserve and other agencies.
Banking groups, including the American Bankers Association and the Bank Policy Institute, said their comments “will inevitably be more comprehensive and therefore more useful to the agencies” if we had sufficient time to collectively evaluate the proposed rules and evaluate each rule against the final OCC framework.
The GENIUS Act is expected to be implemented in 2027, although it is not unusual for federal agencies to extend comment periods for complex rules. The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the banking industry’s request.
The bankers are also embroiled in a debate with the cryptocurrency industry over stablecoins that has so far delayed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act for months and could jeopardize the bill’s potential to become law this year.
Read more: U.S. Treasury proposes requiring stablecoin companies to police bad transactions