On 30 September 2026 the US Treasury published an interim final rule on behalf of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee — FR Doc. 2026-19966. It sets out the forms and steps a state uses to certify that its payment-stablecoin rules are substantially similar to the federal framework in the GENIUS Act. That certification is what lets a smaller issuer stay under state supervision. The rule took effect on publication. Treasury will not accept the certifications until the related information collection is cleared under the Paperwork Reduction Act. A form that cannot be filed yet is a calendar item. It is not a licence, and it is not a dollar.
The GENIUS Act was signed on 18 July 2025. It is the federal statute aimed at payment stablecoin issuers, and it says payment stablecoins under that regime are neither securities nor commodities. The main obligations are written to take effect on 18 January 2027. Agencies were told to finish most of the rules a year after enactment. Most of them did not, and the Act does not fine them for being late. The GENIUS Act is a stablecoin statute. It is not MiCA, and it is not a dollar. This notice is one piece of the missing paperwork, not a second statute.
What happened
The Committee is chaired by the Treasury Secretary, with the chairs of the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. Section 4(c) of the Act is the state route: an issuer with not more than $10 billion in outstanding payment stablecoins may opt for state regulation if the Committee agrees the state’s regime is substantially similar. Above that line, the issuer moves to federal oversight unless it gets a waiver. The $10 billion figure is the issuer’s consolidated outstanding issuance, not a single token’s market cap and not a personal holding.
Two details in the interim rule are easy to miss. A state meets the Act’s one-year filing deadline if it submits any form of certification by 18 January 2028, even a conditional one. If the Committee denies a certification, the state gets at least 180 days to fix it, or up to two years when the problem comes from a new Act of Congress or a new federal rule. Comments on these procedures run to 30 November 2026. An interim final rule is already in effect while those comments are open. That is a different machine from a proposal, which is not in effect at all.
A separate Treasury proposal, published on 18 August, asks who may issue, offer, and sell stablecoins in the United States. Comments on that one close on 19 October. It would treat a stablecoin as issued in the United States if either the issuer or the recipient is located there, and from the Act’s effective date it would bar platforms from offering a foreign issuer’s stablecoin unless that issuer can and will comply with US lawful orders. That proposal is not this forms rule. Do not collapse them.
Why it matters
If you hold a dollar token in an app, nothing on the screen changed on 30 September. The issuer is still a company with a reserve, a blacklist, and a terms sheet. See stablecoins: useful, not magic. “State certified” will show up in marketing before any state has a certification the Committee has actually accepted, because the Paperwork Reduction Act gate is still shut. Florida’s payment-stablecoin issuer law, approved in June, takes effect on 1 October and is built to be submitted under this process. A state statute plus a federal form is a queue. It is not proof that a token in that state is redeemable for cash tomorrow.
Self-custody of bitcoin is outside this file. Payment stablecoins are the product Congress wrote down. Other countries did not adopt GENIUS because Treasury posted a form. MiCA’s own licence calendar already moved, in July 2026, on a different statute.
What happens next
Comment through 30 November. A Paperwork Reduction Act clearance that may or may not arrive before states want to file. An 18 January 2027 effective date that does not move just because the forms were early. And a long argument about foreign issuers under the August proposal, which is still a draft. Watch the Federal Register, not a banner that says a stablecoin is “GENIUS-ready”.
Not legal advice. Not a recommendation of any stablecoin, issuer, or state regime. Not an instruction to redeem, bridge, or rotate dollar tokens.
