The First GENIUS Rule in Force Is a Form No One Can File

The American law governing dollar stablecoins applies in 101 days. One rule implementing it is now in force. It is a form, and nobody can file it yet.

Treasury published the rule on 30 September on behalf of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee. Sixteen pages, a new part 1522 of title 31, effective the day it appeared, comments open until 30 November. It asks 39 numbered questions about itself.

Updating a count

On 24 September HaiPay counted 19 proposed rules using the statutory term "payment stablecoin" since the GENIUS Act was enacted, and no final rules implementing it, with 116 days to go.

Recounted on 9 October, the same search returns 38 documents in all: 22 proposed rules, of which 17 comment periods have closed and five are still open, and one rule implementing the Act in force.

The three new proposals are the Federal Reserve's 104-page implementation proposal and its 16-page companion on application procedures, both published 29 September, and the Securities and Exchange Commission's 234-page crypto custody proposal of 6 October. Every one of them closes after Thanksgiving. The last closes 42 days before the statute takes effect.

The September article also said what to watch for: interim final rules, which take effect without a further comment round, as the date closed in. That is exactly what arrived.

The form comes before the test

The rule prescribes how a state regulator certifies that its own stablecoin regime is substantially similar to the federal one. Under section 4(c) of the Act, that certification is what lets an issuer with no more than $10 billion outstanding opt for state regulation instead of federal.

The test the form attests to does not exist in final form. Treasury proposed its broad-based principles for judging substantial similarity on 3 April, and they are still a proposal. The Committee says so in a footnote of its own: changes to those principles will inherently affect the certifications states submit, which is why it has kept the procedures high-level enough to survive whatever the principles turn out to say.

So the sequence is form first, standard afterwards.

And the form cannot be used

The rule's own dates section settles that. It is effective 30 September, but certifications will not be accepted until the information collection clears approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act. Treasury will post a notice on its website when they are.

A rule in force that cannot yet be complied with is not unusual in American administrative practice. It is worth noticing anyway, because this is the single piece of the GENIUS framework that has made it all the way to binding text.

Three people and two dates

The Committee is small. The Secretary of the Treasury chairs it, the Chair of the Federal Reserve sits on it or delegates to the Vice Chair for Supervision, and the Chairman of the FDIC is the third member.

The statute requires a state regulator to submit its initial certification not later than one year after the Act's effective date, which is 18 January 2028. Seven senators, several of them cosponsors of the Act, wrote to the Treasury Secretary in June arguing that the deadline should not operate as a one-time window that bars future certifications, and pointing out that some state legislatures sit only every other year.

The Committee's answer is a split. Any form of certification filed by 18 January 2028 satisfies the statutory deadline, even if it is conditional or incomplete, and the form carries an optional check box saying so. Substantive review does not begin until the filing is amended into a complete one. After approval, a state must recertify every year, and approval is suspended if a recertification is late.

What an issuer should take from this

If the plan was to be state-regulated on the day the law applies, the chain is not finished. The standard is proposed, the state regimes depend on it, the form is in force but closed, and the committee that approves anything has not started.

The federal route is not in better shape. The rule that decides most of what an issuer must do, Treasury's proposal on issuance, offer and sale, has a comment period that closes on 19 October, and no final text.

What has changed since September is not the volume of work. It is the first confirmation of how the gap will be bridged: by rules that take effect first and get revised later.

What this is not

This is a count of documents, not of pages or importance, and it uses the same method as the September article: the Federal Register API, the term "payment stablecoin", publication date from 18 July 2025 onward.

One rule in force means one rule implementing the Act that has taken effect. Three final rules in that window use the statutory term; the other two are a CFTC rule on the securities laws and crypto assets and an IRS rule on tipped occupations. Widening the search to any final rule mentioning stablecoin at all adds two more, and neither implements the Act.

An interim final rule is binding now, but the Committee states it intends to revise the forms and procedures after considering comments, so the text quoted here may not be the text that governs in January.

HaiPay found no statutory deadline requiring final rules by any date; the 18-month clock sets when the law applies, not when regulators must finish. HaiPay did not contact Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC or any state regulator.

What to watch

Whether Paperwork Reduction Act approval and Treasury's notice arrive before 18 January, so that the one usable piece of the framework is actually usable.

Whether the substantial similarity principles are finalised before the statute applies, after it, or not at all in that window.

And whether more interim final rules follow. One has now done precisely what September's article said to look for, with 101 days left on the clock.