Bank groups and crypto groups have asked Treasury to rewrite parts of its proposal on who may mint a payment stablecoin for buyers in the United States and who may sell one. The letters pull in different directions. The proposed rule, published 18 August 2026 as document 2026-16796 in docket TREAS-DO-2026-0496, would create Part 1523. Comments were due on or before 19 October 2026. The American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Blockchain Association, and the Crypto Council for Innovation each filed that day.

The draft would carry out section 3 of the GENIUS Act, enacted 18 July 2025. The Act starts from a permitted issuer. The draft also opens a section 18(a) path. A digital asset service provider, or DASP, is a paid business such as an exchange that, for users here, swaps, sends, or holds digital assets, or helps build an issuance. From 18 July 2028, it could not sell such a coin here unless a permitted issuer minted it or, as the draft spells out, a foreign issuer meets section 18(a). From the effective date, expected 18 January 2027, eighteen months after enactment, it could not make a foreign issuer’s coin available here unless that issuer can and will follow lawful orders and section 18’s reciprocal arrangements. Knowing help in an unlawful mint can mean up to $1 million for each violation, up to five years in prison, or both, under section 3(f). The Act does not define that help. A 17 September PTYcoin article walks through the proposal.

Where banks and crypto groups agree

According to the American Bankers Association, deposit accounts, reserve custody, and payment or settlement work should stay outside the section 3(f) penalty. Knowing means the bank actually knew the specific issuance was unlawful. Routine work, and honest use of a public agency finding, would not prove it. If permission changes, holders should get notice and a way to redeem or sell.

According to the Independent Community Bankers of America, the bank remains a service provider if it holds the coins or reserves, keeps a deposit or settlement account, or moves payments, and never owes the payout. A license check, a contract record, and a review of material changes let it rely on the customer’s permitted-issuer statement, unless it actually knows a material statement is false.

According to the Blockchain Association, the penalty should require actual knowledge, and a company may accept the issuer’s account of the facts. A quote or a later trade counts only with active help coordinated with the issuer. The association wants the draft’s market-maker example narrowed or dropped, so it does not pull the 18 July 2028 sales limit forward.

Deposits stay outside this law in both bank letters. A tokenized deposit remains a claim on an insured bank even on a ledger, and, the community bankers say, a wrapped-coin rule should leave that claim alone.

The ABA wants one public registry of federal issuers, state-qualified issuers, and foreign issuers with comparability and an OCC registration, which a platform could trust in good faith. The Blockchain Association would use the lists the statute already assigns to the OCC and to Treasury, unless the platform actually knows a material fact the other way.

How wide the platform net should be

The ABA reads the DASP label widely. It still applies if an affiliate takes the fee. Three exemptions should stay narrow: a direct transfer between two people, a move between one person’s own accounts here and abroad at the same parent, and a self-custody wallet that leaves the keys with that person. A platform that holds the coins, or can move them, falls outside the exemption.

The Blockchain Association limits the label to companies serving customers. Own-account trading would not create one without more, nor would taking a permitted coin as payment or a treasury holding by itself. Congress already set aside self-custody software, validators, and liquidity pools for person-to-person trades. Those belong in the rule text. Treasury’s cost write-up, the association says, assumes about 50 to 100 platforms and about $1 million a year. A wider net would need a new count.

How foreign coins would get in

Under section 18(a), a foreign issuer gets through only if conditions are met, including a comparable home regime and registration at the OCC.

The ABA wants standards that match in substance, a rigorous and open comparability review, a location test for minting in the country, and guards against an indirect path. Definitions should catch a state-linked issuer and a wrapped token, and name one issuer on each unit. They ask the agencies to coordinate those rulemakings and, where needed, repropose them as one package with one effective date, because the day a coin counts as issued can differ from the day reserves must cover it. The Blockchain Association asks only that the start dates line up.

Community bankers treat section 18 as a limited exemption for offering or selling a qualifying foreign coin. Direct minting to customers here would stay with permitted U.S. issuers. A wider right could draw transaction balances out of insured deposits that community banks lend to local businesses, farms, households, and towns. Foreign issuers would not make the loans. The group asks Treasury to weigh the effect.

For a bridged or wrapped coin, the community bankers say, responsibility should follow control and the duty to redeem.

According to the Crypto Council for Innovation, the foreign issuer and Treasury decide whether that issuer qualifies. A platform shows official status and government notices, and looks further only if it knows a condition failed. The council wants the limited waiver in section 3(c), so foreign issuers already supervised on the section 4 criteria and registered at the OCC are not cut off on the proposal’s effective date while comparability reviews stay open. The council would keep the 2028 sales limit, the foreign-issuer condition, and that reasonable-belief test. The Blockchain Association would replace that test with actual knowledge plus information the company already has, so a wallet address alone does not force a location program. That association rejects a flat rule that ignores what the company knew, and both reject the offshore test used for securities sales.

The final rule is still unwritten

Who counts as a DASP decides which U.S. apps and exchanges must screen which dollar stablecoins. A foreign-issued coin reaches buyers here through comparability and registration. Treasury will read the comments and can issue a final rule. The proposal binds no one now.

This article is not investment advice.