On Monday, the Department of the Treasury announced that it has issued the request for comment required by section 9(a) of the GENIUS Act. The announcement says:

This request for comment offers the opportunity for interested individuals and organizations to provide feedback on innovative or novel methods, techniques, or strategies that regulated financial institutions use, or could potentially use, to detect illicit activity involving digital assets.  In particular, Treasury asks commenters about application program interfaces, artificial intelligence, digital identity verification, and use of blockchain technology and monitoring.

Innovative tools are critical to advancing efforts to address illicit finance risks but can also present new resource burdens for financial institutions.  As required by the GENIUS Act, Treasury will use public comments to inform research on the effectiveness, costs, privacy and cybersecurity risks, and other considerations related to these tools.

Comments responding to this request should be submitted by October 17 and will be publicly viewable at www.regulations.gov.

– Meredith Ervine