Treasury proposes GENIUS Act rules requiring stablecoin firms to block illicit transactions

FinCEN and OFAC issuing this as a joint rule tells you everything — Treasury is treating stablecoin issuance as a national security surface, not a payments modernization story. The "technological capability to comply with lawful orders" language is doing a lot of heavy lifting here; it's a de facto mandate for programmable freeze functions baked into every compliant token, which makes USDC/USDT's existing blacklist mechanics the regulatory floor, not the ceiling. Meanwhile the $10B state-level threshold lets smaller issuers shop for the friendliest state regime while "substantially similar" standards remain undefined — and FinCEN has a three-year runway to figure out "novel detection methods," which is an eternity in a market already moving $150B+ daily volume through stables.

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