The Weekly Take: FinCEN Left a Crypto Proposal Unfinished for 2,112 Days, Then Withdrew It on Monday. Count the Stages, Not the Actions.

Last week this column counted nine agency actions in seventeen days. The past week supplied the other side of the ledger: two FinCEN crypto proposals withdrawn after a combined 3,190 days in limbo, a CFTC “market-structure rulemaking” that arrived as an advance notice, and a federal lawsuit against the action we said was most likely to produce durable change. Of the seven live crypto rulemakings tracked on this page, one is final. It was sued on 2 October.

Jason Jones, Editor in Chief · 9 October 2026 · 11 min read

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On Monday, 5 October, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network posted two notices to the Federal Register’s public inspection desk. The first withdrew a December 2020 proposal that would have imposed recordkeeping, verification and reporting requirements on transactions involving self-hosted crypto wallets. The second withdrew an October 2023 proposal that would have designated international crypto mixing as a class of transactions of “primary money laundering concern” under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act — the first time that authority had ever been aimed at a class of transactions rather than a specific institution or jurisdiction.¹

The wallet proposal was published in the Federal Register on 23 December 2020. It was withdrawn 2,112 days later. The mixing proposal was announced on 19 October 2023 and published on 23 October; it was withdrawn 1,078 days after publication. Neither was ever finalized. Neither ever bound anyone. For a combined 3,190 days — eight years and nine months, near enough — both sat in the Federal Register in the state every crypto rulemaking from September is now in: proposed.²

FinCEN gave a reason for the mixing withdrawal — commenters’ concern that the rule’s broad definition of mixing “could have a chilling effect on legitimate activity” and impose a heavy reporting burden on banks — and said it would take no further action on the proposal.¹ Industry groups welcomed it. Whether that judgment is right is not this column’s question.

This column’s question is narrower, and it is the one we left open on 18 September and again on 2 October. We argued then that agency rulemaking is fast and that it is reversible, and we spent two columns measuring the first half of that sentence. The past week measured the second half, three ways, in four days.

What we counted last time, and what it was

On 2 October we published a table of nine federal crypto actions taken between the CLARITY Act’s 15 September cloture failure and 1 October. We said the agencies had moved faster than any congressional process, and that was true. We also said, in “What this does not show,” that volume is not substance and that every item could be undone.

What we did not do was sort the nine by stage. That was a mistake, because stage is the variable that determines how much of a rule exists. A federal rule passes through up to four states — an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM), a proposed rule (NPRM), a final rule, and a final rule that survives judicial review — and a no-action letter, exemptive order or staff FAQ sits outside that sequence entirely, operative immediately and withdrawable by the staff or Commission that issued it.

The past week moved three items along that sequence in directions the September count did not anticipate.

One: the withdrawal

The FinCEN notices are the cleanest evidence available that a proposal is not a rule on a delay. A proposal is a draft with a docket attached. It can sit for years. It can be finalized. It can be withdrawn by the same agency under a later administration without any of the procedure that a final rule would require to undo.

It is not a one-off. The SEC’s 2023 “safeguarding” proposal, which would have rewritten the adviser custody rule with crypto squarely in view, was one of 14 Gensler-era proposals the Commission withdrew on 12 June 2025.³ On 1 October 2026 the SEC proposed its replacement: a 760-page framework that would, for the first time, let investment advisers and regulated funds self-custody crypto assets when no qualified custodian is available, and would codify state trust companies as qualified custodians.⁴ Same subject. Same agency. Opposite direction. The replacement now sits in exactly the stage its predecessor died in.

The mechanism is symmetric. That is the entire point, and it is easy to miss when the withdrawals happen to be ones the industry wanted. The FinCEN proposals were withdrawn by an administration that disagreed with them. Every proposal currently open — the SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets, the SEC’s custody framework, the Federal Reserve’s GENIUS Act proposals — can be withdrawn by an administration that disagrees with them, by the same notice, citing the same kind of reason.

Two: the advance notice

On 2 October we wrote that the CFTC had transmitted Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets to the White House Office of Management and Budget on 17 September — two rulemakings “whose titles point squarely at the market-structure territory CLARITY would have codified” — and that the agency was “moving to write its side of the split as regulation.”

Three days after that column ran, the documents came out of OMB, and they were not what that framing implied. On 5 October the CFTC released them as an advance notice of proposed rulemaking — the stage before a proposal. The ANPRM imposes no obligations. It asks for comment on how a framework might be designed, and says the responses will inform any later rulemaking.⁵

It is also narrower than our description. The ANPRM addresses retail crypto transactions that are leveraged, margined or financed, under Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act, and would create a purpose-built subcategory of designated contract market called a “crypto asset market.” The CFTC itself acknowledges that it lacks general authority over genuine cash-market retail commodity transactions, and says the framework is not meant to interfere with the legitimate spot market. Platforms that offer no leverage and make actual delivery would likely remain state-regulated.⁶

CLARITY would have handed the CFTC the spot market. The ANPRM claims the leveraged edge of it. Those are not the same jurisdiction, and our 2 October column should not have described the CFTC’s side of the split as if they were. We have appended a correction to that column.

The stage matters for timing as well as scope. As of 7 October the ANPRM had not yet been published in the Federal Register, so its 60-day comment clock had not started.⁷ After comments close, the CFTC would still need to write a proposed rule, take comment on that, and finalize. The only recent crypto comparator we have on the record is Treasury’s own GENIUS Act sequence: an ANPRM published 19 September 2025, a proposed rule on issuance published 18 August 2026 — 333 days later.⁸ One data point is not a base rate. But if the CFTC moved at Treasury’s pace, a proposed rule would arrive around September 2027, and a final rule some time after that.

“Locked in and ready to ship,” the phrase CFTC Chair Mike Selig used on 16 September, is accurate about intent.⁹ It is the first of three or four shipments.

Three: the lawsuit

On 2 October, the same day our last column called the OCC’s 18 September trust charters “the one most likely to produce durable change,” the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in federal court in Washington.¹⁰

The complaint challenges three things: the OCC’s March 2026 final rule on national bank chartering, Interpretive Letter 1176 from January 2021, and the conditional charter approval granted to Protego Holdings in February 2026. ICBA’s argument is that the National Bank Act permits only three kinds of national bank — deposit-taking banks, bankers’ banks, and trust banks confined to fiduciary work — and that the OCC exceeded its authority by chartering trust banks that do substantial non-fiduciary crypto business. By ICBA’s count the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 trust banks during this administration, at least 13 of them crypto companies. It asks the court to vacate the rule, the letter and the Protego approval, and to bar the OCC from using either policy to approve further charters.¹¹

Two details deserve precision. ICBA has not asked the court to vacate every charter already granted.¹² And it argues that the GENIUS Act, effective 18 January 2027, cannot retroactively cure charters the OCC has already issued — which puts the stablecoin statute and the chartering litigation on the same calendar.¹³

The OCC’s March chartering rule is the only item in this column’s ledger that has reached the final-rule stage. It is now testing the fourth.

The ledger, by stage

Here are the live federal crypto rulemakings this column has covered since August, sorted by how much of each actually exists as of 9 October 2026.

Rulemaking	Agency	Stage	Next date
Regulation Crypto Assets	SEC	Proposed (Aug. 2026)	Comments close 20 Oct. 202614
GENIUS Act: payment stablecoin issuance, offer and sale	Treasury	Proposed (18 Aug. 2026)	Comments close 19 Oct. 202615
GENIUS Act: main implementing rule	OCC	Proposed (Feb. 2026)	Final targeted “by November”16
GENIUS Act: Board-supervised issuers (two proposals)	Federal Reserve	Proposed (24 Sept. 2026)	Comments close c. 28 Nov. 202617
Crypto custody for advisers and funds	SEC	Proposed (1 Oct. 2026)	60 days after FR publication4
Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions / Regulation Crypto Asset Markets	CFTC	Advance notice (5 Oct. 2026)	60 days after FR publication; not yet published7
National bank chartering rule	OCC	Final (Mar. 2026)	In litigation since 2 Oct. 202610

And the column that sits beside it:

Withdrawn	Agency	Proposed (FR)	Withdrawn	Days as a proposal
Unhosted wallet reporting	FinCEN	23 Dec. 2020	5 Oct. 2026	2,112
CVC mixing, Section 311	FinCEN	23 Oct. 2023	5 Oct. 2026	1,078

Seven live rulemakings. One advance notice, five at the proposal stage, one final rule under legal challenge. Zero final and unchallenged.

The GENIUS Act subset is starker. As of today, 448 days after enactment and 83 days after the statutory rulemaking deadline, we can find no final rule implementing the Act in any agency release or practitioner tracker. The Act takes effect in 101 days.

What this does not show

The ledger is a selection, not a census. It lists the rulemakings this column has written about since August. It is not a Federal Register query, and it omits the FDIC’s and NCUA’s GENIUS Act work, the joint AML proposals, and every crypto-adjacent rule we have not covered. A full census by stage is the right measurement and we have not run it yet.

Stage is not effect. The no-action letters, exemptive orders and staff FAQs in our 2 October table never pass through these stages and are operative now. The SEC’s Innovation Exemption governs tokenized-stock venues today without a final rule behind it. A stage ledger understates how much of the current regime is already in force — and it understates how much of it rests on documents a future Commission can withdraw by letter.

A withdrawal by this administration says nothing about withdrawals by the next. We are describing a mechanism, not forecasting its use. The 2020 and 2023 FinCEN proposals were withdrawn because the current Treasury disagreed with them. Whether a future Treasury or SEC disagrees with today’s proposals is a political question this column does not try to answer.

A lawsuit filed is not a lawsuit won. ICBA’s complaint states ICBA’s reading of the National Bank Act. The OCC describes its rule as clarifying long-standing authority, and courts have not yet weighed in. The three charters granted on 18 September are conditional in any case and require further steps before full approval.

An ANPRM can move quickly. Nothing obliges the CFTC to follow Treasury’s 333-day interval, and an agency with a chair this committed may well go faster. The interval is offered as the only comparator in this record, not as a prediction.

We have not weighed the merits. Whether mixers deserve Section 311 treatment, whether crypto trust banks belong inside the National Bank Act, whether the CFTC’s reading of 2(c)(2)(D) is right — these are real questions with serious people on both sides. This column counts what stage things are in.

None of this is legal advice. It is a reading of agency releases, a federal complaint and practitioner analysis, with the dates attached so you can check them.

What would change our mind

The OCC finalizing its GENIUS Act rule in November. That would put the first final implementing rule on the board and move one row of the ledger. Under the arithmetic we published on 21 August, every day earlier it lands adds a day to the transition issuers get before 18 January. Nothing it can do now restores the full 120.

The CFTC publishing a full proposed rule before year-end. That would compress the ANPRM-to-NPRM interval to a few months and make our Treasury comparator look irrelevant. We would say so.

An early ruling for the OCC. A dismissal on standing or an early merits win would leave the chartering rule as the one final, durable item in the ledger and largely restore what we wrote on 2 October about the charters’ durability.

Regulation Crypto Assets finalized in the first half of 2027. The SEC comment period closes on 20 October. A final rule within roughly six months of that would be fast by historical standards and would be the first market-structure piece to cross from proposed to final.

Where this leaves us

The September count was real. The agencies did move fast, and the pace held into October: a new SEC custody proposal, a CFTC advance notice and two FinCEN withdrawals in the first five business days of the month. What changed this week is that the ledger acquired a second column. Two of the week’s federal crypto rulemaking actions were subtractions, and one of September’s additions turned out to be the first step of a sequence rather than the sequence itself.

That is not an argument that the agency rulebook is fake. It is an argument about what kind of thing it is. A statute arrives finished. A rulebook arrives in stages, and each stage can stall, be withdrawn or be sued. The industry lost the statute on 15 September. What it got instead is a ledger in which one item in seven has reached final, and that one is in court.

Two FinCEN proposals spent a combined 3,190 days as proposals and never became rules. Count the stages.

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Sources

All figures as of 9 October 2026 unless otherwise stated. Day counts computed by CoinageReport from the dates given.

1. FinCEN withdrawal notices posted to the Federal Register public inspection site on 5 October 2026 and published 6 October 2026 (91 Fed. Reg., No. 192), signed by Deputy Director Jimmy L. Kirby: FR Doc. 2026-20429 (withdrawing the October 2023 finding and proposed special measure on international CVC mixing under Section 311) and FR Doc. 2026-20430 (withdrawing the December 2020 proposed rule on convertible virtual currency and legal-tender digital asset transactions involving unhosted wallets). See also The Block, “Treasury withdraws crypto mixing rule, citing concerns over ‘chilling effect on legitimate activity’,” 5 October 2026. ↩
2. Unhosted-wallet proposal published in the Federal Register 23 December 2020. Mixing proposal announced by FinCEN press release 19 October 2023 and published in the Federal Register 23 October 2023 (FR Doc. 2023-23449). Day counts run from Federal Register publication to 5 October 2026. ↩
3. SEC withdrawal of 14 pending proposed rules, 12 June 2025, including “Safeguarding Advisory Client Assets” (proposed February 2023). See Dechert, “SEC Withdraws Significant Number of Rule Proposals,” June 2025. ↩
4. SEC proposal on crypto asset custody by registered investment advisers and regulated funds, 1 October 2026, file no. S7-2026-35, releases IA-7023 and IC-36353; approximately 760 pages; 60-day comment period from Federal Register publication. Faegre Drinker client alert, 7 October 2026, describing the proposal as following the rescission of the prior Commission’s custody proposal. Faegre Drinker. ↩
5. CFTC Press Release No. 9307-26, “CFTC Seeks Public Comment on Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Relating to Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,” 5 October 2026, RIN 3038-AF80. ↩
6. National Law Review, “CFTC Sets Its Sights on Retail Leveraged Crypto Transactions,” October 2026, citing the ANPRM’s acknowledgment of the limits of CFTC authority over cash-market retail commodity transactions. ↩
7. Baker Botts, “CFTC Launches Crypto Market Structure Rulemaking as SEC Advances Its Own Digital Asset Framework,” October 2026: as of 7 October 2026 the ANPRM had not been published in the Federal Register. ↩
8. Treasury GENIUS Act ANPRM published in the Federal Register 19 September 2025 (FR Doc. 2025-18226); Treasury NPRM “GENIUS Act Regulations on Payment Stablecoin Issuance, Offer, and Sale,” published 18 August 2026 (FR Doc. 2026-16796). Interval computed by CoinageReport. The two documents address overlapping but not identical questions. ↩
9. CFTC Chair Mike Selig, post of 16 September 2026, the day after the CLARITY cloture vote, saying the agency was “locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.” As reported by The Block, “‘Go time’: SEC, CFTC prepare to push crypto rules as Clarity Act stalls in Senate,” 16 September 2026. ↩
10. Independent Community Bankers of America, “ICBA Sues OCC Over National Trust Bank Charters for Crypto Firms,” press release, 2 October 2026. Independent Community Bankers of America v. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, No. 1:26-cv-03441 (D.D.C., filed 2 October 2026). ↩
11. Complaint scope and charter count (21 national trust bank charters approved or conditionally approved during the current administration, at least 13 involving crypto companies) per the ICBA complaint, as summarized by National Law Review, “ICBA Sues OCC Over Crypto National Trust Bank Charters,” October 2026. ↩
12. Consumer Finance Monitor (Ballard Spahr), “ICBA Sues OCC Over Crypto National Trust Bank Charters: A Significant Challenge to the OCC’s Chartering Authority,” 5 October 2026, noting the complaint does not seek vacatur of every crypto trust charter already granted. ↩
13. ICBA complaint, as summarized by Consumer Finance Monitor and National Law Review, October 2026. ↩
14. SEC, Regulation Crypto Assets, proposed August 2026; comment period closing 20 October 2026, per Baker Botts, October 2026, and this column of 18 September 2026. ↩
15. Treasury NPRM, FR Doc. 2026-16796, DATES: comments due 19 October 2026. ↩
16. Comptroller Jonathan Gould, Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, 19 August 2026, as reported by PYMNTS and The Block. The OCC proposal was released in February 2026. ↩
17. Federal Reserve Board, two notices of proposed rulemaking implementing the GENIUS Act, announced 24 September 2026 and published in the Federal Register 29 September 2026; comments due 60 days after publication, approximately 28 November 2026. ↩

This article is not legal advice. It describes agency releases, a federal complaint and practitioner analysis available at time of writing. Comments are closed sitewide. Corrections to corrections@coinagereport.com.