Sponsors (18)
The bill creates a comprehensive federal regime that improves transparency, custody protections, and financial‑stability oversight for payment stablecoins and aims to preserve cross‑border functionality, but it raises compliance costs, narrows some investor protections, centralizes authority, and tilts the market toward large incumbent firms.
Consumers and businesses using payment stablecoins will get stronger protections: issuers must fully back tokens, publish monthly reserve information and audits, segregate custody, give holders priority in insolvency, and comply with AML/GLBA safeguards, reducing the risk of sudden losses and fraud.
Insured depository institutions, credit unions, and approved nonbank subsidiaries get a clearer federal pathway and defined regulator responsibilities for issuing and custodying payment stablecoins, reducing legal uncertainty for banks and enabling a bank‑based offering model.
The bill curbs dangerously fragile algorithmic or linked stablecoins (a temporary issuance pause and tighter rules), lowering systemic risk and the chance of contagion from token collapses.
New uniform standards, reserve/audit requirements, supervisory regimes, and civil penalties will raise compliance costs and operational burdens that are likely to increase fees and favor well‑capitalized incumbents, concentrating issuance among large banks and firms.
Narrowing securities-law coverage for permitted payment stablecoins and exempting some tokens from SEC treatment reduces investor protections (disclosure, anti‑fraud, SIPC-like remedies), exposing users to greater loss if an issuer fails or mismanages reserves.
Broad federal preemption and 'back‑up' federal enforcement weaken state licensing and supervisory authority, concentrating regulatory power at the federal level and reducing local control and possibly responsiveness to local consumer concerns.
Based on analysis of 15 sections of legislative text.
Creates a federal permit and supervision regime for payment stablecoins, requires 1:1 high‑quality reserve backing, monthly public reserve reports, and limits who may issue or sell such coins in the U.S.
Official title: To provide for the regulation of payment stablecoins, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 26, 2025 by Bryan Steil · Last progress March 26, 2025
Creates a federal regulatory framework for U.S. payment stablecoins: it bans new self‑collateralized stablecoins for two years, requires permitted issuers to fully back coins with high‑quality liquid assets and publish monthly reserve reports with third‑party attestations, and restricts who may lawfully issue or sell payment stablecoins in the U.S. The bill sets application, supervision, and enforcement rules for bank and nonbank issuers, clarifies custody and accounting treatment for custodians, orders studies on stablecoins and their macro effects, and directs the Treasury to pursue international compatibility agreements. The law establishes detailed definitions, application timelines and deemed‑approval rules, federal preemption for federally approved issuers, state/federal supervisory roles (including back‑up federal enforcement), criminal penalties for false certifications, and deadlines for rulemaking and reports to Congress.