Behind most crypto trades sits a dollar stablecoin. It is the token that prices the trade, waits in your account between positions and moves value from one exchange to the next. On September 23, 2026 about $311.7 billion of them were in use, which makes them the closest thing crypto has to cash (source: DefiLlama).
For most of their history, though, you could not easily answer the questions you would ask of any cash you hold. What backs each token, and who checks that the backing is really there? If the company behind it fails, do you get your dollar back, or do you join a long line of people it owes? The answers changed from one issuer to the next, and the fall of TerraUSD in 2022 showed how badly things end when the backing is weaker than it looks.
In July 2025 the United States put its first national answer to those questions into law. It is the first federal statute in US crypto regulation written just for stablecoins. It says who may issue a dollar stablecoin in the US, what has to sit behind each token, what the issuer must show you each month and where you stand if it goes under.
That law is the GENIUS Act, and it starts to apply on January 18, 2027. Even if you trade from outside the US, it shapes the rules behind USDT and USDC, the two coins your futures margin most likely sits in.
What is the GENIUS Act?
The GENIUS Act is the US federal law for dollar stablecoins, signed on July 18, 2025 as Public Law 119-27. It lets only licensed issuers create "payment stablecoins", makes them back each token at least one to one with cash and short-term US government debt, and takes effect on January 18, 2027.
The name stands for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, and it started out as Senate bill S. 1582 (source: Public Law 119-27). It has 20 sections, and nearly all of them do one of three things. They decide who may issue a stablecoin, they fix what must back it, and they set out what a holder is owed, both on a normal day and on the day an issuer fails. If you hold stablecoins, that last part is the one written for you. The law leaves much of the detail to regulators, who fill it in with rules of their own.
Here are the parts that matter most to a holder, and where each one sits in the law.
Rule | What it means for you | Where in the Act |
|---|---|---|
Only licensed issuers | A payment stablecoin issued in the US must come from an approved subsidiary of a bank or credit union, a federally licensed firm or a state-licensed firm | Sections 2 and 3 |
One-to-one reserves | Each token must be matched by at least a dollar of cash, bank deposits, short-term Treasury bills or similar assets | Section 4 |
Monthly reports | The issuer posts its reserves each month, an accounting firm checks the report, and the CEO and CFO sign off on it | Section 4 |
No interest from the issuer | The issuer may not pay you interest just for holding the token | Section 4 |
No government guarantee | The token has no FDIC cover and no US government backing | Section 4 |
First claim on reserves | If the issuer fails, holders are paid from the reserves before its other creditors | Section 11 |
Outside securities law | Licensed payment stablecoins stop counting as securities or commodities | Section 17 |
Start date | The law applies from January 18, 2027 | Section 20 |
Each of those rules hangs on one phrase, "payment stablecoin", so the definition decides which coins the law covers at all.
What counts as a payment stablecoin
A payment stablecoin is a digital asset built for making payments. Its issuer must buy it back for a fixed amount of money and says it will hold a steady value. In plain terms, a dollar token that the company behind it will swap back for one dollar fits the definition.
That definition marks the edge of the whole law. Three kinds of asset sit outside it by name: a national currency such as the dollar itself, a bank deposit (including a deposit recorded on a blockchain, often called a tokenized deposit) and anything that is already a security (source: Public Law 119-27). That promise to redeem is the heart of what a stablecoin is, and the law reaches only the coins whose issuers are legally bound by it.
That leaves some well-known coins in an odd spot. Algorithmic stablecoins, the design behind TerraUSD, try to hold their peg through supply rules written in code, with no issuer promising to buy tokens back, so they fail the test and fall outside the payment stablecoin rules. The Act does not ban these designs. It told the Treasury to study them, along with coins backed by other crypto, and to report to Congress within a year (source: Public Law 119-27).
Side by side, a payment stablecoin looks like this next to the two things people most often mix it up with.
Payment stablecoin | Bank deposit | Yield-paying dollar token | |
|---|---|---|---|
Who issues it | A licensed stablecoin issuer | An insured bank | Usually a fund or a protocol |
Government insurance | None | FDIC cover up to $250,000 | None |
Interest from the issuer | Banned | Allowed | The main feature |
What backs it | Cash and short-term Treasuries, one to one | The bank's whole balance sheet | Whatever the fund holds |
Covered by the GENIUS Act | Yes | Covered by banking law | Only if it meets the payment stablecoin test |
So the quick test for any coin you hold is this: if a company promises to swap it for one dollar, and you can find both the promise and the company, the GENIUS Act was written for it.
Who can issue a stablecoin in the US
From January 2027, only a licensed issuer may issue a payment stablecoin in the US, and the law allows three kinds. A bank or credit union can issue one through an approved subsidiary. A non-bank firm can get a federal license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and a smaller firm can hold a state license.
Knowingly issuing without a license can cost up to $1 million per violation and up to five years in prison (source: Public Law 119-27). All three kinds of issuer must be set up in the US, and each has a named regulator. For a bank's subsidiary it is the bank's own federal regulator, for a federal non-bank issuer it is the OCC, and for a state issuer it is the state.
The state route has a size limit. A state-licensed issuer can stay under state rules only while it has $10 billion or less of tokens out, and only if its state's rules are "substantially similar" to the federal ones. The Treasury has to spell out what that phrase means. Once an issuer passes $10 billion, it must either stop issuing new tokens or move under joint state and federal oversight within 360 days, unless its federal regulator grants a waiver.
Say you hold a state-licensed stablecoin that grows from $8 billion to $12 billion of tokens over a year. The day it passes $10 billion, the issuer has to choose. It can stop minting new coins at once, so the supply you can buy stops growing until redemptions bring it back under the limit. Or it can keep issuing and move under joint oversight within 360 days. Either way, the tokens you already hold can still be redeemed.
Can tech companies or retailers issue a stablecoin?
A large tech firm or retailer can issue a stablecoin only if a three-member committee agrees unanimously. The committee is the Treasury Secretary, who chairs it, the Chair of the Federal Reserve and the Chair of the FDIC. The rule covers any US public company that is not mainly in finance, plus the firms it owns.
To win that vote, the company must show that its coin poses no serious risk to the banking system (source: Public Law 119-27). It must also accept limits on your payment data. Unless you agree, it may not use what it learns from your stablecoin payments to target ads, sell that data or share it outside its group. The same rule applies to non-financial companies based outside the US. So a stablecoin from a household-name app is possible, but only once the three most senior US financial officials all say yes.
Foreign stablecoin issuers
A stablecoin issued outside the US can still be offered to people in the US if the Treasury judges its home country's rules to be comparable to the GENIUS Act. The Treasury can make that call only when the Fed and the FDIC both recommend it. The issuer must also register with the OCC and keep enough reserves at US financial institutions to pay out US customers.
Once it has a complete request, the Treasury has 210 days to decide, and it can take a finding back later if the foreign rules slip (source: Public Law 119-27). Issuers from countries under comprehensive US sanctions, or from places the Treasury has flagged for money laundering, cannot use this route. And whichever route a foreign coin takes, its issuer must be able to follow a lawful US order to freeze or block tokens, and must agree to do so.
Reserve, redemption and reporting rules
A licensed issuer must hold at least one dollar of safe, easy-to-sell assets for every token it has issued. It must post what those assets are every month and have an accounting firm check that report. It must also publish a clear redemption policy, so you know how and when you can swap tokens back for dollars.
The list of assets allowed as reserves is short. It covers US coins and paper money, money held at a Federal Reserve Bank, bank deposits you can withdraw on demand, and Treasury bills, notes and bonds due in 93 days or less (source: Public Law 119-27). It also allows overnight repurchase deals backed by Treasuries, government money market funds that hold only those assets, and tokenized versions of the cash, deposit, Treasury and fund assets. The issuer may not lend out or pledge the reserves, apart from narrow cases such as raising cash to meet redemptions.
The redemption policy has to promise "timely" redemption. Every fee for buying or redeeming tokens must be posted in plain language, and the issuer must give at least seven days' notice before changing one. The monthly report must show how many tokens are out. It must also show the amount, type, average maturity and storage location of each kind of reserve. Each month the CEO and CFO must sign off that the report is accurate, and signing one they know is false is a crime.
When a stablecoin you hold posts its report, here is what to check:
The number of tokens out, and that total reserves are at least as large.
What the reserves are, and how much sits in Treasury bills compared with bank deposits.
The average maturity, which should be short, since Treasuries are capped at 93 days.
Where each part is held, since the issuer must give the location of custody for each kind of reserve.
The report's date and the name of the accounting firm that checked it.
The redemption fees, and whether any changed with less than seven days' notice.
Issuers with more than $50 billion of tokens out that do not already report to the SEC must also publish a yearly audited financial statement. The monthly report works like the stablecoin reserve reports you may already know, except that its contents are now set by law. The redemption policy governs the last step of minting and redeeming stablecoins, when you hand tokens back to the issuer for dollars.
The ban on paying interest
A licensed or foreign issuer may not pay you interest or yield, in cash, tokens or anything else, just for holding or using its stablecoin. The ban is aimed at the issuer. Whether it also covers rewards that exchanges pay out of their own share of reserve income is the fight that held up the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill, in the Senate for months in 2026.
Banks argue that rewards paid through exchanges and affiliates evade the ban and would drain bank deposits, so they want it extended to those firms (source: Bank Policy Institute). More than 125 crypto firms replied in December 2025 that rewards programs are how platforms share value with users, and that reopening a compromise Congress had only just passed would undermine the law's certainty (source: BeInCrypto via Yahoo Finance).
Insurance, naming and marketing rules
A payment stablecoin has no FDIC cover and no US government guarantee, and the Act makes it illegal to claim otherwise. An issuer also may not market a coin in a way that makes it look like legal tender. An issuer may not put "United States" or "USG" in a coin's name, although a label such as "USD" is fine because it names the currency.
Marketing any product in the US as a payment stablecoin when it was not issued under the Act can cost up to $500,000 per violation. For you, this means that from 2027 a coin marketed in the US as a "payment stablecoin" should have a licensed issuer behind it. Any wording that hints at government backing is a warning sign in itself.
Anti-money-laundering rules and the power to freeze
Every licensed issuer is treated as a financial institution under the Bank Secrecy Act. It must run an anti-money-laundering program, check who its customers are, keep records, report suspicious activity and screen against sanctions lists. It must also be able to block and freeze transactions that break the law.
The Act defines a "lawful order" as a final order from a US court or federal agency that tells an issuer to seize, freeze, burn or stop the transfer of specific tokens, and that can be appealed. That power to block specific tokens is why the tokens in your wallet can, in rare cases, be frozen by the issuer itself.
The legal status of payment stablecoins
Under Section 17 of the GENIUS Act, a payment stablecoin from a licensed issuer is not a security under the main US securities laws and not a commodity under the Commodity Exchange Act. In practice, that moves these coins away from the SEC and the CFTC and puts them under banking regulators.
The law does this by adding the same wording to six older laws, from the Securities Act of 1933 to the Commodity Exchange Act (source: Public Law 119-27). Like the rest of the GENIUS Act, the change takes effect on January 18, 2027. Until then, the SEC's own reading fills the gap. In April 2025 its Division of Corporation Finance said that dollar stablecoins redeemable one to one and backed by low-risk, liquid reserves, which it called "Covered Stablecoins", are not securities when sold the way it describes (source: SEC Statement on Stablecoins). In March 2026 the full Commission adopted that view as its own interpretation, in a release the CFTC joined, and said it replaces the earlier staff statement (source: Federal Register). An interpretation can still be revised by a future Commission, while the Act puts the rule into law from its start date.
The start date changes where a licensed dollar stablecoin's legal status comes from.
Question | Before January 18, 2027 | From January 18, 2027 |
|---|---|---|
Is it a security? | No, under the SEC's March 2026 interpretation for covered stablecoins | No, under the securities laws themselves |
Is it a commodity? | Possibly: the CFTC has called tether tokens commodities | No, under the Commodity Exchange Act |
What the answer rests on | Agency interpretations and enforcement orders, which the SEC or CFTC could revisit | A statute that only Congress can change |
The commodity question has a history. In 2021 the CFTC fined Tether $41 million and said in its order that tether tokens are commodities (source: CFTC order against Tether). From the start date, a licensed payment stablecoin leaves that definition.
What happens to your stablecoins if an issuer goes bankrupt?
If a licensed issuer fails, the GENIUS Act puts stablecoin holders first in line for the reserves and keeps those reserves apart from the pool other creditors fight over. It also tells the court to aim to start paying holders within 14 days of a hearing. How well that works in practice is disputed.
Here is what the law does, step by step (source: Public Law 119-27). The reserves are kept out of the failed company's estate, so they are not mixed in with its other assets. Holders share the reserves in proportion to what they hold, ahead of anyone else the issuer owes. Redemptions from the reserves do fall under the automatic stay, the freeze that stops payments when a company files for bankruptcy, but the Act gives holders a fast way out of it. Once the court finds that reserves are available to share out, it must try to order payouts to start within 14 days of the required hearing. And if the reserves come up short of what the law required, the gap becomes a claim on the rest of the estate that ranks first, even ahead of the costs of running the case.
The White House described this as putting holders' claims ahead of all other creditors (source: White House fact sheet). Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin reads it differently. He argues that in a real case holders would rank fifth. Ahead of them would come lenders holding repo and margin collateral, a lender funding the bankruptcy, the lawyers and advisers paid through that lender's deal, and banks or brokers that can offset what the issuer owes them. He also notes that the 14 days run from the hearing, and expects a wait of "at least a couple of months, and possibly much longer" (source: Credit Slips).
Say you hold 1,000 tokens from a licensed issuer that goes bankrupt with reserves worth 97% of the tokens out. On the law's own design, you share the reserves pro rata, so you are due about $970 from them. The missing $30 becomes a first-ranking claim on the issuer's other assets. On Levitin's reading, secured lenders and court costs would take their share of the reserves first, leaving you a smaller payout that may take months to arrive. Either way you would be a creditor waiting on a court, which is a very different place from a bank customer with FDIC cover. That is why stablecoin issuer risk, the chance that the company behind a coin fails, is worth weighing before you hold any coin in size.
The Act itself treats the question as open. It orders regulators to study how a stablecoin issuer's bankruptcy would play out, including whether holders can be paid in full, and to report back to Congress within three years of the law's signing.
The GENIUS Act timeline
The GENIUS Act became law on July 18, 2025 and takes effect on January 18, 2027. The law set two possible start dates, 18 months after signing or 120 days after regulators issue final rules, whichever comes first. Since no final rule had come out by September 2026, January 18, 2027 is now the date.
The math is what locks it in. Any final rule issued after September 20, 2026 would start its 120 days too late to beat January 18, 2027 (source: Public Law 119-27). The Act gave regulators until July 18, 2026 to write those rules, and they missed that deadline: as of September 23, 2026 they had published only proposals, which is why the GENIUS Act effective date now rests on the 18-month clock. One proposal still open is the Treasury's rule on what counts as issuing a stablecoin in the US. It also covers when coins issued abroad can be offered to people in the US, and comments are due October 19, 2026 (source: Federal Register).
From the two votes to the final offer deadline, these are the dates that shape the law.
Date | What happens |
|---|---|
June 17, 2025 | Senate passes the bill |
July 17, 2025 | House passes it |
July 18, 2025 | Signed into law |
July 18, 2026 | Deadline for regulators' rules, missed |
August 18, 2026 | Treasury proposes its rule on issuing and offering stablecoins |
October 19, 2026 | Comments on that proposal close |
January 18, 2027 | The Act takes effect, and issuing in the US without a license becomes illegal |
July 18, 2028 | US platforms may offer only coins from licensed or approved foreign issuers |
The last date matters most for traders. Three years after signing, a crypto platform may no longer offer or sell a payment stablecoin to people in the US unless it comes from a licensed issuer or an approved foreign one (source: US Treasury).
What the GENIUS Act means for traders outside the US
The GENIUS Act governs issuing stablecoins in the US and offering them to people in the US, so it does not license or ban what you do on an exchange outside the US. It still reaches you, because USDT and USDC, the two biggest dollar stablecoins, are shaped by what their issuers must do to keep selling into the US.
The law says its limits on offering coins apply abroad whenever the buyer is in the US. For everyone else, the effects come through the coins themselves. From January 18, 2027, a coin from an unlicensed issuer cannot count as cash in a US firm's books, and US futures brokers, clearing houses, broker-dealers and swap dealers cannot accept it as cash-like margin. From July 2028, a coin that has not qualified can no longer be offered by US platforms, which could split trading between coins that meet US rules and coins that do not (source: Public Law 119-27). And every licensed issuer's monthly report gives holders anywhere a clearer view of what backs their coin.
On BloFin, it comes down to two coins. Of the 499 perpetual futures contracts BloFin listed on September 23, 2026, 475 settle in USDT and 10 settle in USDC, while the other 14 settle in the coin being traded. So whatever the Act does to USDT and USDC matters for the margin behind almost every BloFin futures position. The two coins come from different issuers with different reserves, which is why USDT versus USDC is a real choice for your margin. For any coin issued outside the US, the foreign-issuer route by July 2028 has four conditions. The Treasury must judge its home rules comparable, and the issuer must register with the OCC. It must also keep enough reserves at a US financial institution to pay out US customers, and its home country must not be under comprehensive US sanctions or flagged for money laundering. The Act names no coin, so whether USDT meets those four conditions turns on what its issuer and the Treasury do before July 18, 2028.
Say you keep 5,000 USDT as margin for BTCUSDT Perpetual and ETHUSDT Perpetual positions. Nothing about that account changes on January 18, 2027, because the law is aimed at issuers and at sales to people in the US. What you would watch is the coin itself: whether its issuer qualifies for the US market before July 2028, what its reserve reports show, and how its price holds around those dates. If news around a deadline pushed the coin off its dollar peg, the value of your margin would move with it. That is why it helps to know which coin your margin sits in before the headlines arrive.
If you would rather hold your margin in USDC, BloFin lists the same two markets as the BTCUSDC Perpetual and ETHUSDC Perpetual, and the funding rate and depth of the USDT version are live on the BTCUSDT Perpetual page.
How the GENIUS Act became law
The GENIUS Act passed the Senate 68 to 30 on June 17, 2025 and the House 308 to 122 on July 17, 2025, and President Trump signed it the next day. Both votes drew support from both parties, but they split the Democrats. In the Senate, 18 Democrats backed it, while House Democrats split 102 in favor and 110 against.
The Senate's 18 Democrats in favor included Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner and Angela Alsobrooks, while two Republicans, Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, voted no (source: Senate Daily Press). Two senators, Tom Cotton and Mark Kelly, did not vote, which is why the Senate totals add up to 98. In the House, Republicans backed it 206 to 12 (source: House Roll Call 200).
Side by side, the two votes show how each party split.
Chamber | Date | Yes | No | Republicans | Democrats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Senate | June 17, 2025 | 68 | 30 | 50 yes, 2 no | 18 yes, 28 no (with independents) |
House | July 17, 2025 | 308 | 122 | 206 yes, 12 no | 102 yes, 110 no |
The Senate took the bill up on six days between May 21 and June 17, 2025 (source: Public Law 119-27). The House then passed the Senate's text without changes, which is why it could go to the president the very next day with no second Senate vote. It was the first major crypto law the US had passed, and on the same day the House also passed the CLARITY Act, a broader bill setting the rules for crypto trading markets. That bill is still not law, so whether the CLARITY Act passed remains the next big question for traders.
How crypto markets reacted
The clearest reaction came from the companies closest to stablecoins. On June 18, 2025, the day after the Senate vote, shares of USDC issuer Circle closed up 33.8% at $199.59, and Coinbase rose 16% (source: Reuters via Yahoo Finance).
Ether moved too. In the week the House passed the bill and the president signed it, ether gained 18%, taking its two-week rise to about 43.6%, its best two weeks since August 2021. It traded around $3,506 on July 18, 2025 (source: CNBC). CNBC tied that week to the signing of the first major US crypto law and to strong inflows into ether exchange-traded funds. Those moves are history, not a guide to what the January 2027 start will do, and markets had many other drivers that summer.
Why do people oppose the GENIUS Act?
Critics say the GENIUS Act gives stablecoins the look of a safe, regulated product without the protections of a bank account. Their main complaints are that there is no deposit insurance, redemption rights are loosely defined, fraud victims get little help, and tech firms get room to act like banks.
Consumer Reports, which had pushed for tougher rules, listed six concerns on the day the House passed the bill (source: Consumer Reports). Among them were no enforceable deadline for redemption, no federal insurance or way to recover losses, monthly checks that fall short of independent audits, and oversight left mostly to the OCC. In January 2026, New York Attorney General Letitia James and four New York district attorneys wrote to key Democratic lawmakers about fraud victims. Their letter argues that the law leaves those victims little way to recover their losses, because issuers do not have to return stolen funds (source: The Block). Banks, for their part, say the interest ban leaves a gap for exchange rewards that could pull money out of deposits (source: Bank Policy Institute).
Is the GENIUS Act good or bad?
Supporters make the opposite case. The White House presented the reserve rules as a way to raise demand for US government debt and support the dollar, since issuers will hold large amounts of Treasury bills (source: White House fact sheet). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in November 2025 that he expects the stablecoin market to reach $3 trillion by 2030, up from his earlier forecast of $2 trillion (source: Yahoo Finance). That figure is his own projection, set against about $311.7 billion in use on September 23, 2026 (source: DefiLlama).
Whether the law is good or bad depends on what you want from a stablecoin. If you want a clear rulebook, published reserves and a first claim if things go wrong, it is a big step up from what came before. If you want the protections of a bank deposit, it does not give you those.
Looking to move between USDT and USDC, or trade perpetuals margined in either? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the USDC/USDT Spot trading page, BTCUSDT Perpetual page, ETHUSDT Perpetual page, BTCUSDC Perpetual page or ETHUSDC Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Is the GENIUS Act law yet?
The GENIUS Act has been law since President Trump signed it on July 18, 2025, as Public Law 119-27. Being law is different from being in force, though. Most of its rules apply from January 18, 2027, which is 18 months after signing. The rule that stops US platforms from offering unlicensed coins applies from July 18, 2028. Until January 2027, the Act's licensing rules do not yet bind issuers, so each keeps operating under whatever licenses and guidance applied to it before.
Does the GENIUS Act ban USDT?
The GENIUS Act does not name any coin. It sets conditions instead. From January 2027 only licensed issuers may issue payment stablecoins in the US, and from July 2028 US platforms may offer only coins from licensed issuers or from foreign issuers approved through the Treasury's comparable-rules process. A coin that meets neither test can still trade outside the US. Whether a given coin qualifies depends on its issuer getting a US license or, for a foreign issuer, on the Treasury finding its home rules comparable, the issuer registering with the OCC and keeping enough reserves in a US financial institution for US customers, among other conditions, before those dates.
Are stablecoins FDIC insured under the GENIUS Act?
Payment stablecoins have no FDIC insurance, and the GENIUS Act says so directly. The ban on claiming otherwise reaches anyone, not only the issuer. It is unlawful to represent a payment stablecoin as backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, guaranteed by the government, or covered by federal deposit or credit-union share insurance. A breach is treated like a false claim of FDIC cover under existing federal law, so an app or promoter calling a stablecoin "FDIC-insured" is breaking US law.
Can you still earn yield on stablecoins after the GENIUS Act?
The Act stops the issuer from paying you interest or yield just for holding its stablecoin, whether in cash, tokens or anything else. It says less about rewards that an exchange or another company pays from its own funds, and that gap is the subject of an ongoing fight between banks and crypto firms. Dollar products that pay yield because they are funds or securities, such as tokenized Treasury funds, fall outside the payment stablecoin rules and carry their own risks.
Does the GENIUS Act create a digital dollar?
The GENIUS Act regulates stablecoins issued by private companies and banks, and it does not create a government digital currency, often called a CBDC. The term does not appear anywhere in the law. Bans on a US central bank digital currency have been debated in Congress as separate bills. A payment stablecoin under the Act is a private company's promise to swap your token for a dollar, backed by the reserves it must hold.
Who enforces the GENIUS Act?
Once the Act takes effect, federal regulators enforce it for federally licensed issuers and for those owned by banks or credit unions: the OCC for federally licensed non-bank issuers, a bank's own federal regulator for a bank's stablecoin subsidiary, and the NCUA for a credit union's. They can examine an issuer, stop it from issuing, order it to cease a violation and fine it up to $100,000 a day, with up to another $100,000 a day when the violation is knowing. State regulators oversee state-licensed issuers under $10 billion. Knowingly taking part in issuing a payment stablecoin in the US without a license is also a crime, which regulators can refer to the Attorney General.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Public Law 119-27 (the GENIUS Act), the US Senate and House roll-call records, the US Treasury, the Federal Register, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, alongside Credit Slips, Consumer Reports, the Bank Policy Institute, DefiLlama and reporting from Reuters, CNBC, The Block and BeInCrypto, current as of September 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial, investment, legal or tax advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any stablecoin or other digital asset. Statements by officials, academics, advocacy groups and industry bodies are the views of those speakers, and BloFin takes no position on pending rules or legislation. A stablecoin can lose its peg, and a payment stablecoin carries no FDIC insurance or US government guarantee, so if an issuer fails you are a creditor waiting on a court. Laws and how they are applied can change, and the rules described here take effect on the dates given. Leveraged products including perpetual futures carry additional risk, because losses can exceed your initial margin and positions can be closed out automatically. BloFin services are not available in restricted locations, including the United States. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.