U.S. lawmakers nudged open the door to greater stablecoin adoption with a series of crypto- and digital asset-related acts last week — with President Donald Trump signing the GENIUS Act into law and the House of Representatives passing both the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 or CLARITY Act, as well as the Anti-Central Bank Digital Currency Surveillance State Act, in votes Thursday and Friday.
The clear guidelines provided by the act could provide a much-needed level of legitimacy to stablecoins for finance leaders, acting as the “green light” finance chiefs need for wider adoption, EY Global Blockchain Leader Paul Brody previously told CFO Dive.
Peeking under the accounting hood
Still, CFOs, corporate treasurers and accounting leaders face lingering questions about what integrating stablecoins could mean for their business — and, critically for finance leaders, how those assets should be reported. Among other terms, for example, the GENIUS Act establishes monthly reporting requirements for stablecoin issuers, including requiring an attestation engagement to be included in the reports.
The FASB declined to comment on the GENIUS Act. However, the board is currently in the midst of an agenda consultation, and “stakeholders have identified several standard-setting areas of interest, including potential projects related to stablecoins,” a spokesperson told CFO Dive in an email. “The Board will discuss all stakeholder feedback at a future meeting.”
Although the GENIUS Act lays out definitions for stablecoin issuance, the “next set of rules is probably going to be around accounting for U.S. companies: what is legal tender, what is not, what is treated as cash and cash equivalent, what is not,” Eddequiouaq said. These are key questions today’s finance chiefs and corporate treasurers are considering, he said.
In considering stablecoins, CFOs and company leadership also need to keep a careful eye on what integrating such assets mean for their compliance and risk functions — the regulatory requirements for digital assets, their issuance and related factors differ from traditional such assets and therefore represent a new set of risks, Eddequiouaq said. At the end of the day, companies should be “focused on their core business,” he said. “Stablecoin is not their core business.”
Securities, revisited
Under the terms of the GENIUS Act, payment stablecoins are not considered securities, eliminating in part historic contention between issuers and government regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, which under previous SEC Chair Gary Gensler sued several such firms for violating securities law relating to the issuance of stablecoins.
However, the legislation also “provides the SEC with jurisdiction over digital commodity activities and transaction engaged in by certain brokers and dealers on alternative trading systems and by national securities exchanges.”
“The GENIUS Act made it pretty clear that the issuer cannot, solely because a holder holds the stablecoin, distribute yield to that holder,” Eddequiouaq said. “I’m hoping that the CLARITY Act helps define the line of what is acceptable versus not acceptable” regarding the legal relationship between coin holders and issuers, he said.
As the next round of stablecoin-related legislation circulates in the House and Senate, accounting organizations and standard setters are also keeping a close eye on how the budding industry takes shape.
GENIUS Act leaves stablecoin accounting, risk gaps | CFO Dive