The U.S. Senate scheduled – and then held – a floor vote on the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, a landmark bill to create a federal regulatory framework for dollar-backed “payment stablecoins.” After clearing a key cloture vote in May 2025, the bill came back to the floor and passed on June 17, 2025, with strong bipartisan support (68–30), marking the first time the Senate approved comprehensive legislation focused specifically on stablecoins and one of the first major federal digital asset laws to advance out of a chamber of Congress. The vote followed months of negotiation over how to classify and supervise stablecoins in the U.S. financial system. The GENIUS Act defines payment stablecoins as non-security, non-commodity digital assets designed for payments and redeemable at a fixed monetary value, and places issuers under a tailored prudential regime. It allows both banks and certain nonbank firms to issue stablecoins, imposes reserve, disclosure, and anti–money laundering requirements, and channels large issuers (over $10 billion outstanding) into Federal Reserve or OCC oversight, while allowing smaller issuers to operate under state regimes deemed “substantially similar” to the federal framework. Senate passage sent the bill to the House, where it had to be reconciled with the House Financial Services Committee’s own stablecoin legislation (the STABLE Act) and related market-structure measures before ultimately proceeding to the president, underscoring the GENIUS Act’s importance as the core of an emerging U.S. stablecoin regulatory regime.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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