OCC Final Rule Under the GENIUS Act Opens Stablecoin Applications on January 18

Gould said the OCC released the final rule implementing its portion of the GENIUS Act that morning. He noted that a separate piece on the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering rules is still being prepared together with the Treasury Department. Gould described the rule as the product of roughly 15 months of work by the OCC team.

When the law takes effect under the statute on January 18, the OCC will begin accepting applications from payment stablecoin issuers. Gould said he would discuss the details shortly.

Gould said that, as President Trump and Treasury Secretary Bessent have articulated, the GENIUS Act is about onshoring innovation and about America leading the world in digital assets in the 21st century. He said Congress had done this in the Act.

Gould added that under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Bessent, the OCC has focused on welcoming financial intermediation activities into the banking system, including the use of blockchain technology and payment stablecoin issuance.

Bennington noted that many champagne corks were popped in the crypto space when the Act passed Congress in July 2025, but said the devil is in the details. Those details include how traditional financial services architecture and infrastructure will interface with stablecoins.

Gould said the regulatory rule is only one piece of a larger equation, and that the OCC has been working behind the scenes to build a supervisory framework to put the rule into effect.

Gould said the OCC benefited greatly from comments submitted by industry members, traditional finance players, academics and other stakeholders. He said these comments produced a better final rule that addresses many questions raised during the proposal stage.

Gould stressed that this does not mean the work is complete. When the OCC opens for business on January 18, it will see the market structures and business plans proposed, and it will review its rules and supervisory framework and make changes as needed.

Asked where the GENIUS Act could lead the United States in the next one, three or five years, Gould said that depends on the industry members implementing the framework and on customers who may or may not choose to use the opportunities that payment stablecoins offer. He said the regulators' job is to welcome this innovation into the banking system, which he described as part of the business of banking.

Gould said he believes payment stablecoins will deliver faster speed, particularly in areas such as cross-border payments. He expects real benefits to customers over the short to medium term.

Gould said he did not think this was lost on Treasury Secretary Bessent, whom he described as an economic historian. He said payment stablecoins are a mechanism for growing and ensuring the importance of US dollar dominance, not only for the US but beyond. The interviewer noted that this also creates demand for US Treasury securities.

Gould said reserve requirements are one of the core foundations of the regulation and go to what it means to be a stablecoin, with emphasis on the word stable. He linked this to the OCC's origins in 1863, when its job was to ensure that bank-issued notes had actual value and were backed by assets commensurate with the value on the face of the note. He said Congress's request is similar to that original task.

Gould said Congress laid out in statute a number of assets that could constitute reserves for a stablecoin. The OCC has followed that mandate but provided more detail, with a real focus on managing liquidity risk and making sure the assets will be there to back the stablecoins.

Gould said the emphasis, from the customer's and the congressional perspective, is on a digital asset that is stable in value and that can be redeemed. The regulatory and supervisory regime must ensure that when a customer asks to redeem a stablecoin, there are assets that can be liquidated in the short term to meet the redemption requests, including the volume of requests.

Gould said the OCC focused primarily on this because it is one of the core tenets of stablecoins and what the regulation is designed to address. He credited the comment letters from bankers and digital asset companies, and said the request-for-comment process was part of why the work took so long, since it allowed the OCC to hear from firms that will implement the technology.

Gould said the OCC still has a lot of learning to do. He said that when designing a regulatory and supervisory framework, regulators should periodically reassess it to make sure it remains fit for purpose and does not have unintended consequences, particularly for a nascent industry.

He said the OCC intends a framework that is supportive and welcoming, as Congress, the president and the Treasury Secretary intended. The OCC will continually re-evaluate its framework as it opens for business on January 18 and begins receiving applications and business plans.

Bennington described the rulemaking as a delicate balancing act between providing enough information for clarity and overregulating or overstructuring. Gould said the OCC had a robust comment period, received many comments and benefited from them. He said the rule should not be treated as fixed in stone and that regulators should be expected to reassess and revise if things do not make sense.

Gould said Congress asked the OCC to design a regulatory framework for something still in its infancy, and that no one can entirely predict the future. He said he treats predictive studies with a degree of skepticism, and that the OCC's rule is entirely consistent with the statute.

Bennington cited about $90 trillion in assets under supervision and said the OCC regulates roughly two-thirds of US commercial banks. Gould responded that the rule is important, but supervision is the process of taking an abstract principle in regulation and applying it to the specific facts of a supervised entity, such as a federally qualified payment stablecoin issuer. That requires judgment and discretion.

Gould said the aim is to apply the regulations consistently across all licensed payment stablecoin issuers, so that issuers can expect a degree of transparency and the public can see how the OCC supervises. He said the goal is to build public confidence that these are in fact stablecoins, with emphasis on stable.

Gould said the OCC is not coming at the issue fresh. Although the industry is new, he said the OCC has a lot of experience managing risks associated with stablecoin issuers, and he expressed full confidence in the team.

Bennington noted that the 1863 National Currency Act was created under Abraham Lincoln, with Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase building the scheme to grow nationwide banking markets and knit together the political union. Gould said it is right and appropriate that the OCC and the Treasury play a central role going forward.

Bennington said the GENIUS Act specifically prohibits yield-bearing stablecoins, while the questions of ongoing rewards and whether third parties can pay rewards have been debated. Gould said the proposal introduced a rebuttable presumption to test how people would respond to an anti-evasion requirement.

Gould said he met with more than a thousand community bankers over the past year and learned much from the comment letters. He concluded that it would be premature to draw lines in the sand on which relationships with third parties or affiliates are prohibited in advance. He said he feels more comfortable once actual applications and business plans arrive on January 18, and he expects many applications right away, which will provide more than anecdotal knowledge.

Gould said the OCC has experience with new areas and that this gives it more time to reach informed conclusions rather than rushing in and potentially hamstringing Congress's desire to onshore innovation. He said this does not mean the OCC will not honor the statute, and that it will look at cases on a case-by-case basis. If the OCC is to draw blanket lines, he wants more information and to see how the industry evolves over time.

Gould said the OCC has been working closely with Treasury Secretary Bessent so that everything in the rule is in lockstep with broader geopolitical goals. He said the Treasury Secretary has been empowered to negotiate reciprocity arrangements with non-US jurisdictions, which matters for multi-jurisdictional issuers and for using payment stablecoins to speed up and reduce the cost of cross-border payments.

Gould said it is very important that the US dollar remain the world's reserve currency. He said payment stablecoins create a mechanism to reinforce that role and export it further, which he said benefits customers through faster and cheaper payments.

Bennington noted that the administration now talks about stablecoins as an opportunity rather than a risk, as it seemed to in prior years. Gould said there are many benefits, including speed, efficiency, transparency and auditability, such as the ability to track global payments.

Gould linked this to the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering rules, under which banks and other institutions are expected to know their customers and act as eyes and ears for law enforcement. He said payment stablecoins' transparency and auditability make them extremely valuable in that regard, as well as a tool of US government policy.

Asked what he hopes people in the crypto and digital asset space take away, Gould said people should be excited and that the rule reflects the hard work of many people. He credited President Trump and Secretary Bessent for driving the rule across the finish line, but said the work is not done and that the OCC is only at the beginning.

Gould argued that digital assets and traditional banking are both aspects of financial intermediation. He described banking as dynamic and said it has changed dramatically over its 163-year history, and that the GENIUS Act enables the sector to serve its purpose.