The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) has provided comments to the US Treasury on its proposed rulemaking for state issued stablecoins under the GENIUS Act. The legislation generally provides for state issued stablecoins to meet or exceed the standards and requirements set in the Act. While the CSBS acknowledges the Treasury gets a lot right, it believes the Treasury is overstepping the mark in expanding those requirements to include the OCC’s (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) rules. “The statute does not direct states to follow or defer to the OCC or any other federal payment stablecoin regulator,” the CSBS wrote. It also asserts that the OCC is using the GENIUS Act to try to expand the range of activities that nationally chartered trusts can participate in.
The thread running through most of the objections is that the GENIUS Act recognized that states need some level of flexibility to encourage innovation, rather than imposing a rigid set of rules, so long as they stick to the GENIUS Act as a baseline. The legislation requires state issued stablecoins to comply with state regulations, and that the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee (SCRC) can certify whether those regulations comply with the GENIUS Act. The SCRC is made up of the Treasury, the Fed and the FDIC. The OCC doesn’t have a role, but the Treasury’s proposals effectively introduce one.
While many of the Treasury’s requirements were state calibrated, with the GENIUS Act as the baseline, it also put forward some as “uniform” (see graphic below). The CSBS objected to this, saying that “Treasury may not adopt a principle for substantial similarity that prevents states from exceeding the standards or requirements” of the GENIUS Act.
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