Anchorage backs Treasury’s GENIUS AML rules, seeks secondary-market sanctions clarity
Anchorage supports Treasury’s GENIUS Act AML framework but wants clearer rules on secondary-market sanctions exposure.
Intelligence analysis by GPT-5.4 Mini
Anchorage Digital says Treasury’s proposed stablecoin compliance rules are mostly workable, but it wants clearer guidance on when issuers can be liable for sanctions issues on secondary markets. The letter supports stronger AML standards while pushing for limits on obligations issuers cannot realistically control.
Anchorage is telling U.S. regulators that stablecoin companies should follow anti-crime rules, but they should not be blamed for every bad person who later uses the coin like a dollar bill passed around town.
Analysis
What Anchorage is asking for
Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank and stablecoin infrastructure provider, filed a public comment letter backing the U.S. Treasury Department’s proposed AML and sanctions framework for the GENIUS Act. The company says the framework generally gets the balance right between compliance and innovation.
The core issue
The proposal, issued by FinCEN and OFAC in April, would treat payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act. That would bring them under AML, customer due diligence, suspicious activity reporting, monitoring, and recordkeeping requirements.
Anchorage supports that direction, but it asks Treasury to clarify three areas: secondary-market sanctions liability, enterprise-wide AML programs, and correspondent account requirements. Its main concern is that issuers should not face strict liability for failing to independently identify sanctioned users who interact with stablecoins on secondary markets through smart contracts.
Why the industry is watching
The letter reflects a wider industry debate over how far issuer obligations should reach once a stablecoin circulates beyond the issuer’s direct customer base. Anchorage argues that clearer rules would give regulated institutions the certainty they need to build.
Not all comments were as supportive. Crypto derivatives exchange Hyperliquid and venture firm Paradigm also sought more clarity on secondary-market obligations, but they took a more critical view of the proposal overall. They argued that the current framework could pull secondary-market activity into an issuer’s compliance perimeter even when the issuer has no direct relationship with, or visibility into, the transacting parties.
The story is less about a single company and more about where U.S. stablecoin compliance lines get drawn: at issuance, or throughout the life of a token in circulation.
Key points
- Anchorage supports Treasury’s proposed AML and sanctions framework for the GENIUS Act.
- The company wants clearer rules on secondary-market sanctions liability for stablecoin issuers.
- Treasury’s proposal would treat payment stablecoin issuers as financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act.
- The draft would add AML, customer due diligence, suspicious activity reporting, and recordkeeping duties.
- Other crypto industry commenters also want more clarity, but some are more critical of the proposal.
If Treasury accepts Anchorage’s request for clearer language, regulated stablecoin issuers could get a more workable compliance roadmap. That would make it easier for banks and crypto firms to build payment systems with less legal uncertainty.
If Treasury keeps the rules broad, issuers could face sanctions risk for activity they cannot directly see or control on secondary markets. That could raise compliance costs and make regulated stablecoin infrastructure harder to build at scale.
