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BREAKING: OCC Finalizes GENIUS Act Stablecoin Rules Ahead of January Deadline

PayPal pays 4% on its PYUSD stablecoin and Coinbase pays its subscription members 3.75% on USDC, and the first final rule under America's stablecoin law didn't rule out either.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the regulator for national banks) published its GENIUS Act rule on Wednesday, ahead of the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury, which are still writing theirs.

It takes effect January 18 and makes issuers hold reserves at least equal to every coin outstanding, and generally pay out redemptions within two business days.

The law bans issuers from paying interest solely for holding their coins.

Banks wanted that read broadly, arguing that money parked in a stablecoin paying 4% leaves their deposits and stops funding loans.

The OCC's draft in February would have presumed some deals between issuers and affiliates or partner platforms broke the ban.

The final version dropped that presumption, and the OCC says it'll judge each arrangement on its own facts.

So rewards paid by exchanges rather than issuers survive for now, since a payment made even partly for other reasons sits outside a ban on paying "solely" for holding.

The American Bankers Association said issuers can now offer "economically equivalent yield while technically avoiding the statutory prohibition."

The Bank Policy Institute warned of deposit flight, while the Blockchain Association argued the final text sticks closer to the law Congress wrote.

Banks fought the same rewards battle over CLARITY, the market structure bill that failed a Senate vote in September.

Existing programs get no free pass, though…

Exchanges that have paid rewards for years now need the OCC to sign off on them, case by case.

TD Cowen warned that whoever wins the White House in 2028 could pick a Comptroller with a different idea of what counts as dodging the ban.

If you're earning that 3.75% on USDC, it's now riding on how one regulator reads the word "solely". 🚀

Robots are moving into factories, warehouses and hospitals faster than most people realize. When a new industry takes off like this, the instinct is to buy a basket of names and hope one of them hits.

The trouble is that baskets dilute your winners. In a lot of booms, a single company ends up taking the lion's share, while everyone holding the other six watches from the sidelines.

Our report names the one robot company we think comes out on top, and explains why. It normally sells for $19.99, but today it's free. Opt in and we'll also text you alerts on the stock, so you don't miss a move.

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Ray Dalio says there are two things worth watching right now, and only one of them is the bond market.

He's the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, and the most studied voice on long-term debt cycles alive today.

Here's what he posted:

The first is familiar ground, with the 10-year Treasury yield closing at 5.15% on Wednesday, up from about 4.2% when the year began.

That yield sets the price of money for everything else, Bitcoin included.

On his second point, chip stocks (VanEck's SMH fund, the heart of the AI trade) are up 55% this year by our count and the Nasdaq-100 is up 18%, while Bitcoin is down 3%.

On returns, Bitcoin sits well outside the AI pile.

Since the Nasdaq-100's Oct 6 high, chips have dropped 12% and Bitcoin only about 1%.

Day to day, though, it still gets dragged along when tech sells off.

Over the past 30 trading days its correlation with the Nasdaq-100 is 0.62, barely changed from the 0.67 we measured when we ran Dalio's holy grail test two weeks ago.

(1 means two assets move in lockstep, 0 means no link at all.)

Dalio's answer to a market stuck on one theme is to spread the bets.

For Bitcoin to be part of that spread, it has to hold up on the days AI sells off, as well as over the fortnight.

Bitcoin has passed the two-week version of that test, and the daily one is still open. 🧺

Today we'll be checking in on the amount of Ethereum available for sale on exchanges.

Here's how to interpret this metric:

14.927 million ETH on exchanges. Up from 14.696 million two weeks ago.

After a run of record lows, the balance turned sharply higher.

Roughly 231,000 ETH moved onto exchanges this fortnight, about double the 117,000 that left the print before.

More coins on exchanges means more supply sitting ready to sell, which is the bearish direction for this metric.

At today's price that's about $555 million of ether moved onto exchanges.

The balance jumped 1.6% in two weeks, twice the 0.8% the last outflow trimmed off it.

It's now back above the 14.813 million of a month ago, erasing a month of outflows in two weeks. 💧

UK Banks Hit With 10,000 Complaints Over Blocked Crypto Transfers in 90 Days: Report. A Stand With Crypto report counted 10,092 complaints from 9,803 people between May and August, with Lloyds receiving 2,297 of them.

Ether ETF outflows continue, pass $1B in October so far. US spot Ether ETFs have shed $1.08 billion this month, according to SoSoValue, erasing September's $832 million of net inflows.

Trump to throw spotlight on overseas crypto abuses at White House event. US authorities have halted about $833 million in crypto linked to overseas scams and seized 503 fraudulent crypto websites.

Standard Chartered signs definitive agreements to acquire Zodia Custody. The bank is buying all of the crypto custodian five months after Zodia's shareholders accepted its non-binding offer, with financial terms undisclosed.

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Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: Destroying part of a validator's stake as a penalty for breaking the rules 🥳

Validators get slashed for provable misbehaviour, like signing two conflicting blocks. On Ethereum it burns part of their stake and forces them out of the validator set.

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