The Weekly Take: We Counted the GENIUS Act’s Rulemakings Again. In Three Weeks, Nothing Moved.
On 19 August we ran a Federal Register query and found 31 documents mentioning the GENIUS Act: 18 proposals, two final rules, neither implementing it. We ran the identical query on 10 September. Thirty-two documents. Eighteen proposals. Two final rules. Nine days remain on the clock this all turns on.
On 19 August we ran a Federal Register query and found 31 documents mentioning the GENIUS Act: 18 proposals, two final rules, neither implementing it. We ran the identical query on 10 September. Thirty-two documents. Eighteen proposals. Two final rules. The one addition was a notice about a FINRA filing. Nine days remain on the clock this all turns on.
Three weeks ago we wrote that the GENIUS Act had a deadline almost nobody was watching, and that it fell on 20 September.[1] The point of writing a number down with a date attached is that you can run it again. So we did.
The query is the same one: Federal Register full-text search for “GENIUS Act,” everything published since the Act was signed on 18 July 2025, sorted newest first. On 19 August it returned 31 documents. On 10 September it returns 32.[2]
The composition is where it matters, and the composition did not change at all:
- 18 proposed rules — the same 18
- 2 final rules — the same two
- 12 notices — one more than last month
The single new document, published 9 September, is a Securities and Exchange Commission notice concerning a self-regulatory filing by FINRA.[2] It is not a rulemaking. Nothing was proposed in those three weeks, and nothing was finalized.
The two final rules are worth naming, because “two final rules” sounds like progress until you read them. One is an Internal Revenue Service rule from 13 April defining which occupations customarily receive tips. The other is a joint CFTC and SEC rule from 23 March on applying the federal securities laws to certain crypto assets.[2] Both mention the GENIUS Act. Neither implements it, and neither comes from an agency whose rules can start the clock.
A phrase search can miss things, so we ran a second check that does not depend on wording at all: every final rule published by the four agencies that can start the clock, since the beginning of this year, regardless of subject. There are 33 of them. Not one concerns stablecoins.[3] They are reciprocal deposits, credit union chartering, vehicle loan servicing, suretyship, corporate credit unions, real estate. Ordinary prudential work, finished and filed.
The National Credit Union Administration published eleven final rules on 6 August alone. Its GENIUS Act implementing rule, proposed on 18 May, was not among them.[3]
What the clock actually is
The Act does not take effect on a date Congress picked. It takes effect on whichever of two things arrives first.[4]
The first is a backstop: 18 January 2027, eighteen months after enactment. That one is automatic and requires nothing from anybody.
The second is conditional: 120 days after the primary federal payment stablecoin regulators issue final implementing rules. Those regulators are a closed set of four — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration. Treasury and FinCEN rulemakings, however far along, cannot start it.
Now do the subtraction. For a 120-day clock to finish on or before the backstop, it has to start on or before 20 September 2026. That is not an interpretation; it is 18 January 2027 minus 120 days, and it is the entire reason that date matters.[5]
From publication of this piece, that is nine days.
If nothing final issues in those nine days, the 120-day mechanism does not get extended or contested. It simply stops being the operative provision. Every remaining path leads to 18 January 2027, and the conditional trigger Congress wrote becomes a clause that never fired.
The proposals that could have started it
Three of the four primary regulators have proposed implementing rules. Here is how long each has been sitting.[2]
| Regulator | Implementing proposal | Days pending on 10 Sep |
|---|---|---|
| OCC | 2 March 2026 | 192 |
| FDIC | 10 April 2026 | 153 |
| NCUA | 18 May 2026 | 115 |
| Federal Reserve | none proposed | — |
The Federal Reserve, one of the four agencies whose final rule would start the clock, has not proposed a GENIUS Act implementing rule at all. Its only appearance in the search is an anti-money-laundering programs proposal from 9 July, which is not an implementing rule under the Act.[2]
There is one more piece of timing worth noticing. The most recent GENIUS-specific proposal in the whole set is Treasury’s, published 18 August 2026 — “GENIUS Act Regulations on Payment Stablecoin Issuance, Offer, and Sale.”[2] It is the newest substantive movement on the Act, it landed the day before our last count, and it came from the one agency in the process whose final rule cannot trigger the 120-day clock.
Congress also set a rulemaking deadline. Section 13 required implementing regulations within one year of enactment — 18 July 2026. That date passed with zero final rules from anyone. The statute attaches no consequence to missing it, and nothing observable happened.[4]
What this does not show
Nothing here is evidence of bad faith. Eleven proposed rulemakings across five agencies, with overlapping comment periods and interagency coordination, is ordinary administrative work at ordinary administrative speed. Rules that govern who may issue a dollar-denominated instrument at scale should not be rushed. The observation is about the calendar, not about anyone’s diligence.
A rule could still issue inside nine days. Agencies can and do move final rules quickly when the political will exists, and a final rule from OCC, the Fed, the FDIC or NCUA published on or before 20 September would start the clock and make this piece a snapshot of a moment that passed. We would rather publish that snapshot than not describe the moment.
Missing 20 September is not a failure of the law. The backstop exists precisely so the Act takes effect whether or not regulators finish. 18 January 2027 is a real date with real compliance consequences, and the sector has known about it since July 2025. What is lost if the trigger date passes is not the Act. It is the possibility that the rules governing the Act would be final before the Act binds.
That gap is the thing to watch. If 18 January 2027 arrives on the backstop rather than on the trigger, issuers become subject to a statute whose implementing rules are still in proposed form. That is a genuinely awkward position and it is worth saying plainly that we do not know how the agencies intend to handle it, because none of them has said.
We checked this three ways, and the third is the one to lean on. The phrase search for “GENIUS Act” returns two final rules. An independent search for the statutory term “payment stablecoin” returns the same two.[3] And enumerating every final rule from OCC, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and NCUA this year — 33 documents, no search term involved — turns up nothing on the subject.[3] A wording-dependent method could miss a rule; a complete enumeration of those four dockets cannot. What remains ours rather than the Register’s is the judgment about which agencies count as primary regulators, which comes from the statute, and the reading of what each document does.
None of this is investment advice. It is a count of public documents in a public database, run twice, three weeks apart. The query and the dates are attached so you can run it yourself.
What would change our mind
A final rule from any of the four primary regulators before 20 September. This is the clean disproof and it is nine days wide. OCC, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC or NCUA publishing a final implementing rule starts the 120 days and the trigger provision does what it was written to do.
An agency statement on sequencing. If one of the four says publicly how it intends to handle a January effective date with proposals still outstanding — an interim final rule, a delayed compliance date, an enforcement posture — the awkwardness we are describing becomes a managed transition rather than an open question. We would want the statement, not the reporting of it.
Our own count being wrong. The query is in the sources. If someone runs it and gets different composition — a final implementing rule we have miscategorised, an agency proposal we missed — we want to hear it and we will correct the series rather than defend it.
A statutory amendment moving the backstop. Unlikely inside this Congress’s calendar, and we mention it only because it is the one change that would make the whole countdown moot.
Where this leaves us
The value of a measurement is that it can be repeated. Three weeks ago we published a count with a date on it, which meant that this week we could publish the same count and put the two next to each other. That is the entire method, and it took about four minutes to run.
What it shows is a process that has not advanced. Eighteen proposals in August, eighteen in September. Two final rules in August, the same two in September, neither of them implementing anything. Three of the four agencies that matter have proposals that have been pending between 115 and 192 days. The fourth has not proposed. And the one new document in three weeks concerns a FINRA filing.
Nine days from now, the arithmetic closes. Not with an announcement — that is the part worth watching for. The 120-day trigger will not be repealed or missed in any way that generates a press release. It will just stop being reachable, and the only date left will be the one that was always going to arrive anyway.
Thirty-one documents on 19 August. Thirty-two on 10 September. Thirty-three final rules this year from the four agencies that could start the clock, and not one of them the rule that starts it. We will run the count again on 21 September.
Sources
Federal Register figures pulled 10 September 2026 and stated as of that date; the 19 August figures are from our own prior count. Published 11 September 2026.
- ↩ CoinageReport, “The GENIUS Act’s 120-Day Runway Expires on 20 September. Almost Nobody Has Noticed,” 21 August 2026, using Federal Register figures pulled 19 August 2026: 31 documents mentioning the GENIUS Act, of which 18 proposed rules and two final rules, neither implementing the Act.
- ↩ Federal Register full-text search for the phrase “GENIUS Act,” publication date on or after 18 July 2025, sorted newest first, run 10 September 2026. Result: 32 documents — 18 Proposed Rules, 2 Rules, 12 Notices. The two Rules are “Occupations That Customarily and Regularly Received Tips; Definition of Qualified Tips” (Treasury/IRS, 13 April 2026) and “Application of the Federal Securities Laws to Certain Types of Crypto Assets and Certain Transactions Involving Crypto Assets” (CFTC/SEC, 23 March 2026). Newest document: an SEC notice on a FINRA self-regulatory filing, 9 September 2026. Implementing proposals from primary regulators: OCC (with Treasury) 2 March 2026; FDIC 10 April 2026; NCUA 18 May 2026. The Federal Reserve’s only listed proposal is “Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Programs,” 9 July 2026. Most recent GENIUS-specific proposal: Treasury, “GENIUS Act Regulations on Payment Stablecoin Issuance, Offer, and Sale,” 18 August 2026. Query reproducible at federalregister.gov.
- ↩ Two corroborating Federal Register queries, both run 10 September 2026. First, full-text search for the statutory phrase “payment stablecoin,” published on or after 18 July 2025: 30 documents — 18 Proposed Rules, 10 Notices, 2 Rules — the same two final rules identified in note 2. Second, all documents of type Rule published on or after 1 January 2026 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or the National Credit Union Administration, with no search term applied: 33 documents, none of whose titles concern stablecoins, digital assets or crypto. Agency appearances across those 33 (joint rules counted once per agency): NCUA 17, OCC 11, FDIC 8, Federal Reserve 4. Eleven of the NCUA rules were published on 6 August 2026.
- ↩ GENIUS Act, Pub. L. 119-27, enacted 18 July 2025. Section 20 sets the effective date as the earlier of 18 months after enactment (18 January 2027) or 120 days after the primary federal payment stablecoin regulators issue final implementing regulations. Section 13 set a one-year deadline for those regulations — 18 July 2026 — which passed without any final rule and carries no statutory penalty. Effective-date mechanics summarized in Astraea, “When Does the GENIUS Act Actually Take Effect? The 120-Day Trigger and the January 18, 2027 Backstop.”
- ↩ CoinageReport calculation. 18 January 2027 minus 120 days is 20 September 2026, the latest date on which a final rule could issue and still have its 120-day period end on or before the statutory backstop. Days pending computed to 10 September 2026: OCC 192, FDIC 153, NCUA 115.
This article is not investment advice. It describes a public database and a public statute. Comments are closed sitewide. Corrections to corrections@coinagereport.com.
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