U.S. regulators have missed the GENIUS Act’s one-year rulemaking deadline, leaving the federal stablecoin framework awaiting final implementation even as industry participants say the law has already accelerated institutional adoption.

According to federal rulemaking records and regulatory proposals reviewed after the July 18 deadline, none of the key agencies charged with implementing the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act have completed their final rules despite Congress requiring them to do so within one year of the law’s enactment.

President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law on July 18, 2025, creating the first standalone federal framework for payment stablecoins in the United States. 

The legislation established reserve, redemption, disclosure, licensing and supervisory requirements for issuers while directing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Treasury Department, and state regulators to complete implementing regulations through the notice-and-comment process within one year.

Although the deadline has now passed, the statute does not say that missing it delays the law’s effective date or suspends its requirements. Instead, much of the framework remains defined by the legislation itself while agencies continue working on the operational details that will govern compliance and supervision.

For companies building around stablecoins, however, the regulatory delay has become one of the biggest talking points one year after the law’s passage.

Legal clarity has improved but implementation remains unfinished

Speaking to crypto.news, Diogo Cassinelli, sales and partnerships manager at Trace Finance, said the anniversary serves as an opportunity to evaluate both the progress made under the GENIUS Act and the issues that remain unresolved.

“This week marks one year since the GENIUS Act was signed into law, and the anniversary is a useful checkpoint to reflect on how far the industry has come, and where we still need to go,” Cassinelli said.

While he described the creation of a federal framework for stablecoin issuance as “an incredible milestone,” he argued that operational questions extending beyond issuance continue to slow adoption.

According to Cassinelli, the unresolved issue is how stablecoins move through the traditional banking system and who ultimately bears responsibility for those transactions. He said this gap is one reason lawmakers and industry participants are paying close attention to the proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, or CLARITY Act, which is expected to establish a wider market structure framework for digital assets.

Cassinelli said regulatory uncertainty has not stopped fintech firms from building cross-border payment products, but it has made expansion slower and more expensive because every banking relationship requires institutions to conduct their own compliance assessment instead of relying on a common federal standard.

“The process alone adds months to timelines that should take weeks,” he said, adding that those costs increase whenever companies enter new markets or onboard new banking partners.

Looking ahead, Cassinelli said passage of the CLARITY Act would allow banks and payment providers to approve stablecoin-related services more quickly because compliance expectations would already be established at the federal level.

“A definitive framework means banks and payment providers can say yes faster,” he said.

“CLARITY gives a definitive path for large institutions to move money with stablecoins, while also giving startups a clear map to build for these institutions.”

Agencies continue working through proposed rules

Several of the largest implementing rules remain at the proposal stage despite the statutory deadline.

The OCC previously proposed standards covering reserve assets, capital, liquidity, custody, reporting and risk management for issuers under its supervision. The FDIC later released its own proposal addressing prudential standards, reserve requirements, redemption, custody, capital treatment and the handling of tokenized deposits held by supervised institutions.

Meanwhile, the NCUA published separate licensing and operational proposals, with comments on its latest package closing only one day before the July 18 deadline, making completion of the rule impossible through the normal rulemaking process.

Treasury has yet to finalize guidance explaining when state stablecoin frameworks qualify as “substantially similar” to the federal regime, an important decision because issuers with no more than $10 billion in outstanding stablecoins may remain under state supervision if their regulatory framework receives Treasury certification.

At the same time, the Federal Reserve, FinCEN, OCC, FDIC and NCUA have jointly proposed customer identification requirements for primary-market participants, while additional anti-money laundering and sanctions proposals from FinCEN and the Office of Foreign Assets Control also remain under review.

Because several comment periods extend into August, at least part of the regulatory framework cannot be finalized before the one-year deadline.

Regulatory delays haven’t slowed industry growth

For investors, the first year of the GENIUS Act has still produced measurable changes across the stablecoin market.

Alex Witt, general partner at Verda Ventures, told crypto.news the legislation has already accomplished one of its main objectives by encouraging institutional participation.

“A year in, the GENIUS Act has clearly succeeded as a legitimization signal,” Witt said.

He pointed to stablecoin market capitalization exceeding $300 billion, transaction volumes increasing roughly fourfold, institutional entrants including Fidelity and Ripple obtaining charters, and Tether launching its USA₮ product through Anchorage as evidence that adoption has continued despite unfinished regulations.

At the same time, Witt argued that implementation has “badly lagged” because six federal agencies were expected to finalize rules by July 18 but have yet to complete any of them.

According to Witt, the absence of final regulations means the industry continues operating under legacy disclosure practices while charter approvals and Federal Reserve access decisions are occurring before the complete regulatory framework is in place.

“The unresolved pieces, the leaky yield ban pushing capital offshore and the January 2027 backstop effective date, mean the Act’s real test is still the next six months, not the year behind it,” he said.

Offering more insights on the matter, Ashley Ebersole, co-founder and chief legal officer of tx and a former senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, drew a similar distinction between the legislation itself and its implementation.

“One year post-enactment, it’s fair to say the GENIUS Act delivered a framework that established structural mandates, but has faltered in implementation,” Ebersole told crypto.news.

According to Ebersole, codifying payment stablecoins into federal law gave institutions the confidence needed to increase participation. She said stablecoin supply has expanded by approximately $55 billion since the law took effect, while tokenized U.S. Treasury assets have grown from about $3.9 billion to nearly $9 billion. She added that six separate real-world asset categories have now exceeded $1 billion in value, attributing part of that growth to the regulatory certainty created by the Act.

Ebersole nevertheless described the rulemaking delays as the legislation’s biggest execution challenge. She noted that agencies missed the one-year deadline despite Congress requiring implementation within that period, leaving eight major proposals still awaiting completion.

According to Ebersole, many institutions aligned their compliance planning with the original legislative timeline, making the administrative delays a setback even though the law contains a January 18, 2027, statutory backstop for implementation.

She also said stablecoins have become an essential settlement layer for tokenized assets, arguing that the legislation has reduced uncertainty surrounding long-term institutional blockchain infrastructure.

Ebersole identified the prohibition on issuer-paid yield as one of the biggest questions entering the framework’s second year.

“A definitive question for 2027 concerns the yield prohibition,” she said, explaining that decentralized finance protocols and wrapped products may continue offering interest-like returns through other mechanisms even though the GENIUS Act and Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework prohibit issuers from paying yield directly to token holders.

Jay File, chief executive and chief financial officer of Nasdaq-listed Lite Strategy, also pointed to the international regulatory environment rather than the delayed rulemaking alone.

“The GENIUS Act is the first serious federal framework for stablecoins,” File told crypto.news. 

“Paired with MiCA’s enforcement baseline in Europe, we’re approaching a moment where the regulatory risk that caused institutional hesitation is finally being removed.”

File added that regulatory developments across multiple jurisdictions are moving digital assets toward “legitimacy, clarity, and institutional access,” which he described as beneficial for the industry.

Attention is now beginning to move toward the proposed CLARITY Act, which lawmakers continue negotiating in Congress. While discussions over ethics provisions and other outstanding issues remain unresolved, supporters, including Rep. Bryan Steil, have argued that the legislation would establish clearer rules for the wider digital asset market after the GENIUS Act created the first federal framework for payment stablecoins.

Robinhood Markets is drawing fresh attention from Wall Street as analysts argue the company’s next growth leg could come from tokenized assets and prediction markets rather than traditional retail crypto activity. In a Monday research note, Bernstein lifted its price target for Robinhood stock to $160 from $130, while keeping an Outperform rating. The shares were last reported around $101.

Bernstein’s thesis centers on the idea that two adjacent segments—prediction markets and tokenized equities—could scale faster than legacy revenue streams. The firm expects prediction markets to become Robinhood’s fastest-growing business, projecting segment revenue of $1.7 billion by 2028, which it frames as a 64% compound annual growth rate.

Key takeaways

• Bernstein raised Robinhood’s stock price target to $160 from $130 and maintained an Outperform rating.
• The research note argues prediction markets could become Robinhood’s fastest-growing segment, with revenue projected at $1.7 billion by 2028.
• Tokenized equities are presented as a major long-term opportunity, supported by Robinhood’s blockchain infrastructure strategy.
• Bernstein points to a broader market backdrop: growth in onchain real-world assets that could expand to $2 trillion–$4 trillion by 2030 from about $35 billion today.
• Infrastructure providers are also accelerating governance and issuance tooling for tokenized securities, suggesting institutional momentum is building.

Bernstein’s shift: prediction markets and tokenized equities

Bernstein’s Monday note emphasizes that Robinhood’s expansion path is increasingly tied to product categories that extend beyond straightforward crypto trading. The firm singled out prediction markets as the most immediate growth driver, forecasting rapid scaling that could outpace other lines of business.

Importantly, Bernstein also linked the prediction markets story to Robinhood’s broader platform ambitions—positioning the company to compete across multiple “battleground” asset types. While the note highlights several categories, its core investment case is that Robinhood can leverage its distribution and user base to build market activity around new trading paradigms.

Tokenized equities: Robinhood Chain and the infrastructure angle

On the tokenized equities front, Bernstein identified Robinhood’s engagement with blockchain infrastructure as a long-term differentiator. The firm referenced Robinhood Chain, describing it as the company’s Arbitrum-based layer-2 network used to support tokenized real-world assets.

According to Bernstein, Robinhood’s approach is designed to allow the platform to develop on-chain financial products without needing to depend on third-party blockchains. This matters for investors because infrastructure choices can affect product rollout speed, integration complexity, and the economics of building and operating blockchain-enabled services.

Bernstein tied its tokenization view to a macro capital markets shift, arguing tokenization is becoming a foundational layer for capital markets. The analysts projected the total value of onchain real-world assets could rise to $2 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030 from roughly $35 billion today. They further expect tokenized equities to capture an increasing portion of that growth as issuance and adoption broaden beyond certain asset types such as Treasury securities and private credit.

Rather than treating tokenized equities as a narrow experiment, Bernstein frames them as part of a larger, compounding trend in how financial institutions may issue, transfer, and govern assets digitally. For traders and users, that could eventually translate into more choices for tokenized instruments; for builders and issuers, it signals rising demand for compliant rails that can support custody, governance, and reporting.

Wall Street builds governance tooling for tokenized securities

Bernstein’s note landed as institutional infrastructure continues to mature. On Monday, Alpaca and Broadridge Financial Solutions announced they had integrated Broadridge’s shareholder governance capabilities into Alpaca’s Instant Tokenization Network.

The integration is aimed at giving holders of tokenized securities governance rights closer to those of traditional shareholders, including features such as proxy voting, investor communications, and regulatory disclosures.

That announcement follows last week’s partnership between Securitize and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, which focused on developing infrastructure for blockchain-based initial public offerings and follow-on equity offerings under existing U.S. securities regulations. Together, the developments suggest tokenized assets are moving beyond issuance experiments toward operational completeness—particularly around governance and regulatory workflows.

Tokenized stocks have also been gaining visibility in market tracking. RWA.xyz reports the asset class has grown to nearly $2 billion in market value this year.

What to watch next for Robinhood and tokenized markets

For readers following Robinhood’s trajectory, the key question is whether management can translate these infrastructure and segment-level bets into consistent revenue growth as prediction markets scale and tokenized equities gain traction. In the broader market, investors should watch whether governance tooling and compliance layers—such as the Broadridge-Alpaca integration—continue to expand, since that infrastructure often determines how quickly tokenized securities can move from pilots to repeatable offerings.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy published formal guidance last July that his company would not sell MSTR stock below 2.5x the value of the company’s BTC holdings except to pay interest and dividends.

It’s sold $14.3 billion of MSTR since, every share of it below that formerly sacred 2.5x mNAV.

The term mNAV — invented by fans of public companies amassing crypto — refers to a company’s multiple-to-Net Asset Value under the assumption that crypto holdings like BTC are tantamount to its NAV, even though they’re not.

Saylor’s ephemeral pledge appeared on July 31, 2025, on slide 96 of the company’s earnings deck, claiming, “We will not issue MSTR below 2.5x mNAV except to pay interest and dividends.”

Executives also reiterated that commitment verbally on that earnings call and elsewhere.

Once upon a time, during a brief mania for leverage in late 2024 and early 2025, investors actually valued Strategy far higher than the value of its BTC.

Although the company has fallen below 1x mNAV several times and now trades at 1x, it once traded for 3.2x the value of its BTC — a level it’s never reattained.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has drawn a line between Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap and an AI investment cycle that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon expects to attract $725 billion this year.

CZ wrote in a recent X post that artificial intelligence and Bitcoin serve separate financial and economic roles, rejecting the idea that rapid advances in AI can protect investors when fiat currencies lose purchasing power.

“AI is great, but it does not protect you against inflation. Bitcoin does.”

According to CZ, artificial intelligence can raise productivity, improve business efficiency and support technological development, while Bitcoin gives holders access to an asset whose supply cannot be expanded. His comparison places scarcity at the center of Bitcoin’s appeal rather than treating it as another fast-growing technology investment.

Capital has continued to enter AI software, chips, data centers and computing infrastructure as companies seek applications across healthcare, finance and manufacturing, CZ noted. Although those investments may produce new services and higher output, he argued that ownership in an AI company remains tied to revenue, execution and competition.

Companies developing AI products can also issue additional shares or raise fresh capital to fund expansion, according to CZ. Such financing can dilute existing shareholders, whereas Bitcoin’s protocol limits the total number of coins to 21 million, preventing any company or government from increasing its supply.

For CZ, that difference gives Bitcoin its potential as a long-term store of value when inflation weakens fiat money. His case does not rest on Bitcoin matching the productivity gains promised by AI; instead, he views the asset as protection against monetary expansion and the loss of purchasing power.

Bitcoin and AI serve different investment needs

CZ has previously acknowledged that the AI boom could temporarily pull money away from Bitcoin and other assets. As private companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic attract large funding rounds, he argued that some investors may sell existing holdings to gain exposure to AI-related opportunities.

Despite that competition for capital, CZ does not consider Bitcoin and artificial intelligence direct rivals. Under his framework, AI helps companies produce more goods and services, while Bitcoin allows investors to hold an asset that cannot be diluted through additional issuance.

The distinction also separates the risks attached to the two themes. According to CZ, an AI company’s value depends on its ability to turn technology spending into a durable business while competing against other developers. Bitcoin holders face different risks, but its programmed scarcity does not depend on one management team meeting sales targets or defending market share.

Demand for AI infrastructure remains strong, with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon forecasting that related investment will reach $725 billion this year. Dimon has linked his optimism to the volume of capital entering the industry and the continuing strength of the U.S. economy.

Describing the spending cycle as difficult to stop, Dimon compared its momentum with a wave gaining force.

“We’re in a bull market. It’s like a little tsunami. When that kind of thing happens, it’s very hard to stop.”

Dimon’s view supports CZ’s assessment that AI will continue drawing large amounts of investor capital, although the two executives differ sharply on Bitcoin. The JPMorgan chief has repeatedly criticized the cryptocurrency, while CZ has built his inflation argument around its fixed issuance.

Rather than dismissing the AI trade, CZ’s comments assign it a separate purpose. He credits the technology with improving productivity, but he does not believe higher output or stronger corporate earnings can replace an asset designed to resist supply expansion.

Debt concerns strengthen Bitcoin’s scarcity case

At the same time, rising government borrowing has added weight to the monetary concerns behind CZ’s position. Dimon, despite his long-running criticism of Bitcoin, has recently warned about government debt and geopolitical risks that could affect markets over the next several years.

BlackRock executives have also connected fiscal pressure with Bitcoin’s investment case. Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, has argued that concern over U.S. debt and persistent budget deficits could become a major source of demand for the cryptocurrency.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink issued a similar warning in his 2025 annual letter, stating that uncontrolled U.S. debt could eventually threaten the dollar’s reserve-currency status. Fink argued that decentralized assets such as Bitcoin could benefit if investors lose confidence in national currencies and seek alternatives outside government control. BlackRock’s 2025 annual letter also placed technological change and long-term investing among the forces reshaping capital markets.

BlackRock’s fixed-income team has separately identified rising U.S. debt as a risk to demand for long-dated Treasury bonds and the dollar. The asset manager’s analysis warned that heavier issuance and reduced demand from major buyers could push borrowing costs higher, adding another fiscal concern to the case advanced by Bitcoin supporters.

Against that setting, CZ’s argument treats AI spending and Bitcoin ownership as responses to different conditions. His view assigns AI a role in generating economic growth while reserving Bitcoin for investors seeking scarcity when debt, inflation, or currency weakness threatens the value of conventional money.

Analysts at Bernstein have raised their price target on Robinhood Markets, based on their investment thesis that the online brokerage’s next phase of growth will be driven by tokenized equities and prediction markets rather than traditional crypto trading.

In a Monday research note, Bernstein raised its price target on Robinhood (HOOD) stock to $160 from $130 per share and maintained its Outperform rating. HOOD stock was last seen trading around $101.

The analysts said prediction markets are poised to become Robinhood’s fastest-growing business, forecasting segment revenue to reach $1.7 billion by 2028, representing a 64% compound annual growth rate.

Beyond prediction markets, Bernstein identified tokenized equities as a major long-term opportunity, pointing to Robinhood’s investment in blockchain infrastructure. The firm highlighted Robinhood Chain, the company’s Arbitrum-based layer-2 network, as its proprietary infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, enabling the platform to build on-chain financial products without relying on third-party blockchains.

Bernstein said that tokenization is emerging as a foundational layer for capital markets, projecting that the value of onchain real-world assets will grow to between $2 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030 from roughly $35 billion today. The analysts expect tokenized equities to account for an increasing share of that growth as adoption expands beyond Treasury securities and private credit.

Robinhood is competing across key “battleground” asset classes, including prediction markets, perpetual futures and tokenized RWAs. Source: Bernstein

Related: Tradable’s $1B Stellar deal adds to institutional tokenization boom

Wall Street expands tokenization infrastructure

The Bernstein report comes as financial institutions continue to expand infrastructure for tokenized securities.

On Monday, brokerage infrastructure provider Alpaca and financial technology company Broadridge Financial Solutions announced they had integrated Broadridge’s shareholder governance tools into Alpaca’s Instant Tokenization Network. The integration adds capabilities such as proxy voting, investor communications and regulatory disclosures for tokenized securities, aiming to give token holders governance rights comparable to those of traditional shareholders.

The announcement follows last week’s partnership between tokenization platform Securitize and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald to develop infrastructure for blockchain-based initial public offerings and follow-on equity offerings within existing US securities regulations.

The institutional push comes as tokenized stocks continue to gain traction. The asset class has grown to nearly $2 billion in market value this year, according to RWA.xyz.

Related: Crypto Biz: When dollars disappear, stablecoins step in