On July 27, the OCC requested public comment on the forms entities would file to apply to issue payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, and the forms foreign issuers would file to register. They show how the licensing and registration process in the OCC’s March 2 proposed rule would work in practice: what an applicant sends in, what its executives have to submit, and what the OCC will use to decide. Comments are due September 25.
Earlier this year, on May 18, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Board published its second notice of proposed rulemaking implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act). The proposal sets operating standards for permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) that are subsidiaries of federally insured credit unions and updates the NCUA’s share insurance and capital rules.
On June 5, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) published a Notice of Second Modification to Text of Proposed Regulation under the Digital Financial Assets Law (DFAL). The modifications respond to the Office of Administrative Law’s (OAL) disapproval of the rulemaking: OAL issued a Notice of Disapproval on May 12 and, on May 19, published a Decision of Disapproval describing the deficiencies the DFPI must resolve. Originally proposed on April 4, 2025, the regulations went through a public comment period that closed May 19, 2025, and a first modification on September 29, 2025, which renumbered the rules, modified the Money Transmission Act (MTA) exemption, and made other technical changes. The DFPI submitted its final rulemaking file to OAL on March 30, 2026. It accepted comments on the second modifications from June 5 through June 22, 2026.
On May 29, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) took a set of actions that together open a path for digital asset perpetual contracts to trade on registered U.S. platforms by classifying them as futures, rather than swaps, for the first time. The Commission approved the first such product, issued a policy statement on how it will review future perpetual contracts, and its staff issued separate guidance addressing foreign-listed perpetuals and customer margin and 24/7 trading. Perpetual contracts, often called perpetual futures, are futures-style instruments without a fixed expiration date, and they have until now traded almost entirely on offshore crypto trading platforms.
On May 22, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Board of Directors approved a notice of proposed rulemaking to extend Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and sanctions compliance standards to the permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) it supervises under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act). These GENIUS Act BSA and sanctions compliance rules for PPSIs were recently proposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as we discussed in a prior advisory.
On April 7, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Board approved its second notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act). This second set of FDIC proposed regulations would establish prudential standards for FDIC-supervised permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) and FDIC-supervised stablecoin custodians, and it would update the capital and deposit insurance frameworks for the bank parents of those issuers and for stablecoin reserves and tokenized deposits.
Yesterday, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing and voted 15–9 to advance H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the CLARITY Act), sending the first comprehensive Senate crypto market structure bill to the floor.
On Thursday, May 14, at 10:30 a.m., the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee will meet in executive session to mark up H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the CLARITY Act). The session is a key procedural step for this comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation that, if enacted, would create a new federal framework for how crypto markets are regulated, supervised, and policed for fraud, illicit finance, and other purposes.
On April 10, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) jointly issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) setting out their view of how sanctions, anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance requirements should apply to permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. The agencies also issued an accompanying fact sheet.