Summary
Debevoise legal update from May 2025, before GENIUS Act passage, covering parallel advancement of GENIUS Act (Senate) and STABLE Act (House). Covers shared elements and key differences: treatment of foreign issuers and state-to-federal escalation threshold for growing issuers.
Key Points
- Written pre-passage; both bills out of committee, awaiting floor votes.
- Shared: payment stablecoin definition, interest payment prohibition, 1:1 reserve requirement.
- Key difference (foreign issuers): GENIUS Act and STABLE Act diverged on how strictly to restrict offshore issuers.
- Key difference (state-federal escalation): STABLE Act required state-supervised issuers exceeding a size threshold to migrate to federal oversight; GENIUS Act more permissive.
- Trump administration simultaneously liberalizing crypto policies across multiple agencies (OCC, FDIC, Fed).
Concepts Mentioned
- GENIUS Act — one of the two bills compared
- Stablecoin Legislation — the broader process
- Tether — the foreign issuer tension at the heart of the difference
Notes
Pre-passage comparative analysis. Now superseded by actual GENIUS Act text, but useful for understanding what was negotiated away from the stricter STABLE Act version.