GENIUS Act Rulemaking: OCC Adopts Industry-Preferred Reserve Standards, Issues Trust-Bank Charters to Crypto Firms

As six federal agencies faced a July 18, 2026 statutory deadline to finalize GENIUS Act stablecoin rules, reporting in late June revealed the rulemaking had tilted decisively to industry. The OCC — led by Comptroller Jonathan Gould, former chief legal officer at a blockchain firm — sided with the crypto industry on reserve-quality standards over stricter banking-sector preferences, and issued preliminary trust-bank charters to Crypto.com, Ripple, and Circle. The final rules take effect January 18, 2027. The structure is regulatory capture by design: the industry got the regulator it wanted, the timeline it wanted, and the reserve standards it wanted.

This is the rulemaking-capture stage of the stablecoin arc that runs from the 2025-07-18–trump-signs-landmark-genius-act-hailing-exciting-new-frontie signing through the conflict warnings in 2026-03-10–senators-stablecoin-genius-act-trump-crypto-conflicts. The revolving-door comptroller and the charters issued to the firms being regulated are a distinct mechanism from the FinCEN/OFAC AML docket tracked at 2026-06-09–genius-act-aml-comment-period-closes-wlf-verified-absent-july-18-framework-effective. The new trust-bank charter framework is also the regulatory channel that World Liberty Financial’s own charter application (2026-06-09–trump-family-2-3b-crypto-income-wlfi-national-bank-charter) would flow through.