The US Treasury Department has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to implement Section 3 of the GENIUS Act, opening a 60-day public comment period on how the government will license and police stablecoin issuers operating in the United States. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department is 'moving quickly to implement that framework,' framing the rules as an effort to strengthen the dollar and keep America competitive in digital payments.
The core provision sets a hard deadline: effective July 18, 2028, digital asset service providers will generally be barred from offering stablecoins in the US unless those coins are issued by a licensed issuer. Violations carry fines of up to $1 million and prison terms of up to five years for anyone who issues a payment stablecoin without proper authorization.
The proposal's reach extends well beyond the issuers themselves. According to the Treasury's own guidance, even advertising an unapproved stablecoin to US buyers, or helping a user bypass IP-based geographic restrictions to access one, would count as a violation under the proposed rules — meaning exchanges and platforms would effectively need to police how and where foreign-issued stablecoins circulate, not just whether they list them directly.
A 60-Day Comment Window
Treasury is inviting input from a broad range of stakeholders once the proposal is published in the Federal Register, with all submissions made publicly available on Regulations.gov. The comment period gives issuers, exchanges, and other market participants a formal channel to flag implementation concerns before the rule is finalized — a process detailed in Treasury's own press release on the proposal.
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Part of a Broader Regulatory Push
The stablecoin proposal lands amid a wider stretch of US crypto policy activity this year, following other efforts to formalize digital-asset market structure, including industry pushes for regulators to recognize onchain data sources. For stablecoin issuers with meaningful US user bases but no domestic license, the 2028 deadline effectively starts a multi-year countdown to either secure federal or state authorization or exit the American market entirely.
