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As the Treasury Department develops new regulations under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, America’s Credit Unions (AmCU) is urging policymakers to balance innovation with practical oversight — and to ensure credit unions are not left behind in the process.
In a letter submitted Friday to Treasury’s request for comment, James Akin, AmCU’s head of regulatory advocacy, outlined a series of recommendations designed to help regulators combat illicit finance in the digital assets sector while allowing diverse financial institutions, including credit unions, to safely participate.
“As Treasury develops the regulatory regime for payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act, we believe it is crucial that the framework not be one-size-fits-all,” Akin wrote. “The spirit of the legislation to encourage innovation should extend to allowing credit unions to issue or utilize stablecoins in a safe manner.”
AmCU identified several major risks in the digital asset ecosystem, including anonymous exchanges, obfuscation tools like mixers and crypto-related cybercrime, but cautioned regulators against overreach. The group urged Treasury to support standardized, secure API frameworks without mandating specific technologies, encourage risk-based rather than prescriptive AI requirements and advance digital identity frameworks that protect privacy.
Akin also called for stablecoin regulations calibrated to the nature of the asset and its risk, not the charter of the institution.
Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr recently described the GENIUS Act as providing “a helpful statutory framework,” but emphasized that regulators must coordinate across agencies to fill in “important gaps” and protect users of stablecoins.
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