U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould has committed the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to publishing its final rulebook for payment stablecoins by November.

Gould delivered the GENIUS Act commitment during a fireside chat at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole on August 19. “So we are very intent on moving quickly and getting a final rule out by November so that we will be able to start processing applications within the new year,” he said. The Comptroller added that the OCC “will have a final rule out by November” once it finishes weighing industry feedback.

That rulebook is the gateway for applicants: it will fix the capital, liquidity, and reserve standards that chartered banks and non-bank issuers alike must meet under the new framework.

A missed statutory deadline

Federal agencies were supposed to lock in their GENIUS Act rules by July, one year after the Act’s enactment. That date — a statutory deadline of July 18, 2026 — came and went without a finished OCC rule.

November now stands as the new deadline per the Comptroller, and if the OCC delivers on that timeline it will still be ahead of the law’s own effective date of January 18, 2026.

President Donald Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS, Act in July 2025, establishing a federal framework for payment stablecoins — dollar-pegged tokens in a market led today by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. The Act requires issuers to hold one-to-one reserves in high-quality liquid assets and bars them from paying interest, leaving regulators to write the detailed rules. The rules are meant to come into force next year, which is why the OCC is racing to beat that timeline after missing the July date. Should the agency fail to meet its target, the Act may take hold without a rulebook from the regulator.

What the proposed rule already covers

In February, the OCC floated a 376-page proposal that stakes out the agency’s authority over stablecoins and spells out capital and liquidity demands tied to risk management.

The draft posed more than 200 questions and closed its comment period on May 1, with reserve backing, compliance conduct, and bank-style capital standards all on the table for both chartered banks and non-bank applicants.

Other regulators are moving in step. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) have put out aligned proposals, while the Treasury Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) have addressed anti-money-laundering and sanctions duties for issuers.

On August 17, the Treasury Department called for public comments after issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on implementing Section 3 of the GENIUS Act as the Act comes into force in tranches.

Charter demand and a stalled Congress

Gould paired the timeline with numbers showing how fast bank chartering has turned toward crypto. In the OCC’s own account of the event, he said the agency has fielded 40 new bank charter applications since Trump took office roughly 18 months ago, and 23 of them build in some form of digital asset activity.

He pointed out that the figure is an eightfold jump from the four applications recorded during the Biden administration — a record he told the audience showed “where the puck is going.”

Gould also shared his thoughts on the CLARITY Act, the market-structure bill that would divide digital asset oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, which appears to have hit legislative gridlock, with some saying it is unlikely to clear Congress this year. “We don’t know if or when or what may be the end result of that process,” the Comptroller said, adding, “What we have is the GENIUS Act. That’s been law for over a year now, and we need to execute on that.”