Treasury Proposes the Rules for Who May Issue a Dollar Token
The department set out when a stablecoin counts as issued or sold in the United States and what a foreign issuer must do to reach American users, filling the largest remaining gap in the new framework.
The Treasury Department proposed rules on Monday defining when a payment stablecoin is considered issued or sold in the United States and setting out the licensing requirements that follow — the piece of the federal stablecoin framework that determines who is inside the perimeter and who is outside it.
Why the definition is the whole game
A token is software. It can be issued by a company incorporated anywhere, held in a wallet controlled from anywhere, and transferred to an American user in seconds.
Congress created a category of permitted payment stablecoin issuers, subject to full reserve backing, redemption standards and federal supervision. That regime only works if there is a clear test for when an issuer is operating in the United States. Without one, the fastest way to avoid the rules is to incorporate offshore and let American users find you.
The proposal addresses exactly that: the circumstances that bring an issuance or sale within U.S. jurisdiction, and the obligations a foreign issuer takes on when it markets to American customers or lists on American platforms.
The rest of the rulebook
The Treasury proposal joins a stack of interagency work. In June, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the OCC, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the National Credit Union Administration jointly proposed anti-money-laundering, sanctions and customer identification standards for permitted issuers, with comments on the customer identification piece closing this week.
The comptroller's office has said it is targeting November to finalize its primary rules. The statutory deadline for implementing regulations passed in July with roughly ten proposals still pending across the agencies — a gap the industry has been navigating by relying on conditional charters and supervisory expectations rather than final rules.
What issuers are actually waiting for
Three answers. Whether reserve assets can be held as bank deposits at scale or must sit in Treasury bills. How strictly the presumption against paying holders yield will be enforced, including through affiliates and rewards programs. And what a foreign issuer must do to keep serving American users.
Those three decisions will do more to determine the shape of a $320 billion market than anything in the statute itself.
