Proposed GENIUS Act Amendments Could Reshape Traditional Financial Services

Last month, U.S. lawmakers promised stablecoin regulations would be approved by Memorial Day.

That didn’t happen. But the GENIUS Act, an acronym for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 Act, which could be the country’s first stablecoin legislation, did eventually make progress Monday (June 9) when Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., filed for cloture.

Under Senate rules, filing for cloture starts the timer on a 30-hour clock for the GENIUS Act, setting the stage for a Wednesday (June 11) vote window for lawmakers.

“Thank you for your leadership [Sen. Thune]! The GENIUS Act is one step closer to passage, a huge milestone for the crypto community,” said the U.S. Crypto and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Czar David Sacks in a Tuesday (June 10) post on X.

The stablecoin bill will require 60 votes to overcome the filibuster and move to a final vote.

Billed as a watershed moment in digital asset regulation, the GENIUS Act could then be signed into law within three weeks if it clears Congress. If passed, the law would likely accelerate institutional adoption of blockchain technology by offering clearer rules and reducing legal uncertainty.

The tech sector has largely welcomed the GENIUS Act. Companies like Apple, Google, Meta, Uber and X are reportedly developing use cases around stablecoin integration to streamline payments, reduce transaction fees and enhance global scalability.

Meanwhile, traditional financial institutions are also readying stablecoin strategies fit for a regulated marketplace. French bank Societe Generale announced Tuesday that its Societe Generale-Forge (SG-Forge) subsidiary would launch a stablecoin, known as USD CoinVertible (USDCV) — on the Ethereum and Solana public blockchains, with Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY) acting as reserve custodian.

PYMNTS covered last month how JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (BofA), Wells Fargo and Citigroup are exploring the launch of a jointly operated stablecoin.

Still, with 122 proposed amendments under active debate, the GENIUS Act has become a litmus test for how the U.S. intends to approach financial innovation without sacrificing systemic stability.

Read more: Crypto Rulemaking Has FinTech Rushing in, TradFi Waiting to See

Sen. Thune last month promised his peers an open amendment process when the GENIUS ultimately goes up for its final passage, and fellow lawmakers have taken him up on it by filing dozens of amendments. Over three dozen new amendments were filed between Monday and Tuesday (June 10).

These amendments span a wide spectrum — from technical compliance issues to core questions of financial architecture, including a few on hot button topics. One of the amendments is an entire separate bill — the Durbin-Marshall credit card routing mandates proposal, which takes aim at the interchange fees charged by networks like Visa and Mastercard and could have vast ramifications for the payments industry if ultimately included in the GENIUS Act. 

Another amendment filed by U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Amendment 2239 to S. 1582, would impose government price controls on private products through an all-in annual percentage rate (APR) cap for credit cards at 10%. 

A separate addition to the GENIUS Act lineup from a group of democratic senators aims to strip the president of the capability, granted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose duties and tariff-rate quotas, as Trump has done to advance his economic agenda.

While the GENIUS Act is fundamentally a stablecoin and digital asset bill, it now carries a variety of Trojan horse provisions with seismic implications for the traditional payments and banking industries. Observers believe that the amendments will be divided into three or four groups, resulting in a more efficient and abbreviated open amendment process, given that many are duplicative.

See also: Crypto Firms Grapple With Bank-Like Risks, Without the Regulation

Whether the GENIUS Act ushers in a new era of trust or inadvertently magnifies systemic risk could depend on how the final amendments are crafted and enforced. 

The stablecoin bill would set up rules for dollar-pegged tokens used to make payments. The stablecoins would have to be backed one-to-one with reserves held in short-term investments like federal debt, overseen by federal or state regulators.

Still, there are risks inherent in the construct of stablecoins, PYMNTS reported earlier. As stablecoin issuers hold substantial amounts of U.S. Treasuries, their growth could influence demand and volatility in the Treasury market.

Rohit Chopra, the third director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and previous member of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has warned about the implications of intertwining stablecoins with the traditional financial sector, particularly by giving retailers and tech companies the capability to issue their own stablecoins.

Ultimately, as the Senate prepares for a crucial vote, all eyes are on Capitol Hill. And even if it passes the Senate, the bill still has a long way to go to before it reaches the president’s desk.

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