News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
A federal licensing regime for payment stablecoin issuers is law, but every implementing rule was still at the proposed stage when the statute's own rulemaking deadline passed, and the companion market-structure bill has yet to reach a Senate floor vote.
The GENIUS Act creates a federal licensing regime for payment stablecoin issuers, with 1:1 high-quality liquid reserves, monthly reserve attestations, redemption rights and parallel federal and state approval pathways. Every implementing rulemaking remained at the proposed stage as the statute's July 18, 2026 rulemaking deadline passed: Treasury has issued an advance notice (September 18, 2025) and proposals on certification of state regimes (April 1, 2026) and illicit finance (April 8, 2026); the OCC proposed its issuer framework on February 25, 2026; the FDIC proposed licensing rules on December 16, 2025 and capital and liquidity rules on April 7, 2026; the NCUA proposed rules on February 11 and May 18, 2026; and FinCEN proposed customer identification requirements on June 18, 2026. The companion CLARITY Act market-structure bill passed the House in 2025 and cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14, 2026, but a floor vote was still unscheduled in late July 2026. Separately, the OCC conditionally approved five national trust bank charters for digital-asset firms on December 12, 2025, and SEC staff issued a joint statement on tokenized securities on January 28, 2026 confirming that tokenization does not change the securities-law character of an instrument.
| Framework | Status | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act, Public Law 119-27) | Enacted | 18 July 2025 | Federal regime for payment stablecoin issuers: 1:1 reserves in cash, short-dated Treasuries and repo, monthly attestations, par redemption, no interest payments to holders, dual federal/state pathways with a $10bn state-regime threshold. |
| Treasury advance notice of proposed rulemaking on GENIUS Act implementation | Proposed | 18 September 2025 | Sought comment on the scope of the payment stablecoin definition, foreign issuer comparability and reserve composition ahead of formal proposals. |
| FDIC notice of proposed rulemaking on stablecoin issuer applications | Proposed | 16 December 2025 | Application and approval procedures for FDIC-supervised subsidiaries seeking to issue payment stablecoins. |
| NCUA notices of proposed rulemaking on credit union stablecoin issuance | Proposed | 11 February 2026 | First proposal February 11, 2026; a second NCUA proposal followed on May 18, 2026. Neither was finalised as of July 2026. |
| OCC notice of proposed rulemaking for federally qualified payment stablecoin issuers | Proposed | 25 February 2026 | Application, supervision and capital expectations for national banks and federal branches issuing payment stablecoins. |
| Treasury notice of proposed rulemaking on certification of state stablecoin regimes | Proposed | 1 April 2026 | Process by which state regimes are certified as substantially similar to the federal framework. |
| Treasury notice of proposed rulemaking on illicit finance and AML for stablecoin issuers | Proposed | 8 April 2026 | Sanctions compliance, blocking and lawful-order capability requirements for permitted payment stablecoin issuers. |
| FDIC notice of proposed rulemaking on capital, liquidity and risk management for stablecoin issuers | Proposed | 7 April 2026 | Prudential standards for FDIC-supervised issuing subsidiaries. |
| FinCEN notice of proposed rulemaking on customer identification programs for stablecoin issuers | Proposed | 18 June 2026 | Would extend CIP obligations to permitted payment stablecoin issuers. |
| Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act, H.R.3633) | Pending | 14 May 2026 | Passed the House in 2025; approved by the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14, 2026 and placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar (No. 423). Revised committee text circulated June 1, 2026; floor consideration unscheduled as of late July 2026. |
| SEC Division of Corporation Finance and Division of Trading and Markets staff statement on tokenized securities | Guidance | 28 January 2026 | Confirms that a tokenized security remains a security and that distribution, custody and settlement obligations follow the underlying instrument. |
| OCC conditional approvals of national trust bank charters for digital-asset firms | In force | 12 December 2025 | Five conditional approvals: First National Digital Currency Bank (Circle), Ripple National Trust Bank, BitGo Bank and Trust, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos Trust Company. Circle received final OCC approval on July 10, 2026. |
| NYDFS virtual currency regime (BitLicense, 23 NYCRR Part 200) and stablecoin guidance | In force | 8 June 2022 | State-level licensing and reserve/attestation guidance for USD-backed stablecoins issued from New York. |
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A definitive merger agreement would make North Capital Investment Technology a wholly owned MoonPay subsidiary, bringing two SEC-registered broker-dealers, the PPEX alternative trading system, a transfer agent and an investment adviser inside a payments company. MoonPay states no price; CoinDesk and Fortune each put it above $60m in stock on unnamed sources.
SoFi says settlement of its debit and credit card transactions across Mastercard's network now runs in SoFiUSD, issued by SoFi Bank, N.A. under a national charter and redeemable one for one, on a programme it puts at $25bn of annualised volume. Merchants are paid into SoFi accounts and can withdraw at any hour at no cost. The release does not name the blockchain.
A Form 8-K discloses a five-year arrangement under which Circle pays Binance a monthly incentive fee set as a percentage of the USDC held through its Modular Smart Contract Wallet service, replacing agreements of November 2024 and August 2025, alongside a private placement of 1,237,011 Class A shares at $80.84. The press release announcing the deal does not mention the fee.
Release 34-106402 grants temporary conditional relief to Tokenized Securities Venues from the exchange definition and to certain liquidity providers from the dealer definition, until 17 September 2031. Smart contracts must sit on a public permissionless ledger, issuers can object to third-party tokenizations, and Tier 1 trading is capped at 75 symbols and 0.25 per cent of prior-month volume.
The committee adopted a substitute by voice vote whose only change is to replace the date of the introduction of the Act with 14 September 2026 in six places, rejected two minority amendments by 12 to 28 and 16 to 25, and reported H.R. 10357 by 38 yeas to 5 nays. The Joint Committee scores the bill at a net $500m over 2027 to 2036.
Arc goes live as a layer one whose fees are payable in USDC, with a founding validator cohort of eleven institutions alongside Circle including DTCC, ICE, Mastercard and Visa. Circle says it completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC in the United States and describes the token as a digital commodity, adding that the mint is not a commitment to launch it.
Complaints unsealed in Manhattan allege Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang learned of forthcoming Robinhood Crypto listings on a private Slack channel and bought perpetuals on Hyperliquid before each announcement, making more than $50,000 each. The pleading says the venue holds no CFTC approval for a futures market and geofences United States addresses.
Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 failed at 2:19 p.m. against a three-fifths requirement of 60 votes, so the chamber never took the bill up and no text was voted on. The Senate's roll call record gives four Republicans among the 50 nays, alongside 44 Democrats and two independents, with one Democrat not voting.
The verified complaint in 26 Civ. 8010 names ten Tron addresses holding 61,192,367.59 USDT as the proceeds of Iranian oil sold to Chinese buyers. Its own table dates the issuer's freezes to 15 June and 26 July 2025, and it describes about $508m of the same trade clearing through a New York correspondent account.
H.R. 10357 rewrites the tax treatment of digital assets across seven titles and was noticed for a vote on 16 September. Its wash sale extension applies to dispositions after the date of introduction, the par rule for licensed dollar stablecoins from 2027, and the $10 de minimis fee exception and simplified accounting election from 2028.
New York led seventeen other jurisdictions in a letter to the Senate Banking Committee objecting that the bill gives the SEC preemption authority indirectly through a new qualified transaction loophole in the Securities Act of 1933, and would render the covered security designations in section 18 meaningless. That provision is unchanged from the version published four days earlier.
Lummis, Boozman and Scott released a 635 page substitute for H.R. 3633, claiming 126 changes requested by Democrats. Read against the 10 September version, the ethics sunset of noon on 20 January 2029 is gone, the developer shield no longer reaches 18 U.S.C. 1960, and the Treasury circuit-breaker on stablecoin rewards must be triggered within 18 months of enactment.
Senator Cynthia Lummis published a 630 page substitute amendment to H.R. 3633 ahead of a Senate vote on 15 September. It requires rules for persons who control a non-decentralized finance trading protocol to register with the CFTC and to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, and preempts state securities and commodities law over protected developer activities.
Nasdaq said it would invest $100m in Payward through Nasdaq Ventures, that Payward would adopt Nasdaq surveillance across its crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures and options venues, and that Nasdaq Equity Tokens are expected in the second quarter of 2027. No valuation is stated in the release.
Vlad Tenev told CNBC that a listed company cannot control securities other firms issue referencing its shares, and would not say how Robinhood will vote the shares held against its Stock Tokens. Robinhood's own pages say the tokens are debt securities of an unregulated Jersey issuer conveying no legal or beneficial rights in the underlying.
The market maker filed on the agencies' joint comment file on the swap and security-based swap definitions, saying binary options on issuers' reported metrics are securities, that a venue should not choose its regulator by its own characterisation of a product, and that equity-linked perpetuals should not be approved until the classification is settled.
The bank moved USBDC, its dollar-backed token, between U.S. Bank entities in North America and Europe on the public Stellar network, and said the pilot evaluated minting, payment redemption, freezing and clawback and validated its internally built Digital Asset Platform. No amount, reserve arrangement or client availability was disclosed.
Elizabeth Prelogar, Solicitor General from 2021 to 2025, filed for Hyperliquid Policy Center in Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. v. Selig, arguing that the CFTC order enlarged the market rather than dividing it, so competitor standing does not follow, and that CME's interest in reclassifying perpetuals as swaps is outside the zone of interests. Leave was granted the same day.
Visa said it would pair VisaNet settlement files with Credit Coop's onchain credit facility, which funds a stablecoin card programme's daily obligation to the network and takes repayment automatically from the receivables through a smart contract. It reported more than 160 programmes, a $20bn annualised settlement run rate and $2.5bn financed since 2023 with no defaults.
Block, Inc. published the public volume of a charter application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for Builders Bank & Trust, N.A., an uninsured national trust bank in Sioux Falls that would custody digital assets, execute customer orders on a riskless principal basis and settle stablecoins. The volume carries one public exhibit and seven confidential ones, and no capital figure.
MoonPay signed a definitive merger agreement on 23 September to acquire North Capital, whose affiliates hold broker-dealer, alternative trading system, transfer agent and investment adviser registrations.
The two companies announced a five-year agreement and a $100m share placement on Tuesday. Circle's release describes promotion and infrastructure services.
SoFi Bank says settlement of its debit and credit card transactions across Mastercard's network now runs in SoFiUSD, on a programme it puts at $25bn of annualised volume.
The Innovation Exemption lets a Tokenized Securities Venue trade tokenized listed shares on an automated market maker without registering as an exchange, until September 2031.
Arc goes live with gas payable in USDC and no native token required, and Circle has minted the full 10bn supply of one anyway.
Ways and Means ordered H.R. 10357 favourably reported on Wednesday, two days after the market structure bill lost cloture 49 to 50.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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