US and UK financial officials have expanded discussions on stablecoins and wider digital asset regulation as Washington begins implementing the GENIUS Act and Britain continues revising its own framework. The latest talks took place in London at the 13th meeting of the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group, with senior officials from HM Treasury and the US Treasury joined by regulators including the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The meeting did not result in new rules or binding commitments. Still, both sides said they support the responsible use and growth of digital assets while also emphasizing consumer protection and financial stability.

Digital assets move to the center of bilateral talks

Digital finance was a core topic in the London discussions. US officials briefed their UK counterparts on the rollout of the GENIUS Act, which creates a federal framework for payment stablecoins, and on broader efforts to define the structure of the US digital asset market.

The two sides also discussed tokenization, payment modernization and the G20 Cross-border Payments Roadmap. UK officials, for their part, updated the US delegation on Britain’s Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy and on the appointment of Christopher Woolard as Wholesale Digital Markets Champion.

Shared principles, but no common rulebook yet

The renewed engagement comes as the United States moves from legislation toward implementation, potentially giving issuers and financial institutions a clearer path to operate under federal standards. The UK, by contrast, is still completing its domestic regime for stablecoins and related digital asset activities.

Under the UK approach described in the talks, the FCA is expected to oversee the issuance, custody and trading of qualifying UK stablecoins, while the Bank of England would jointly regulate stablecoins deemed systemically important. That makes cross-border coordination increasingly relevant for US issuers that may want access to UK payments and capital markets.

A separate July 14 statement from the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future addressed that challenge directly. The two governments said they want to promote regulatory convergence where appropriate without displacing either country’s domestic process. They also said stablecoins presented as money should be fully backed, with at least one-to-one reserves in high-quality liquid assets, segregated backing and timely redemption. The statement further proposed exploring a route for stablecoins issued in one jurisdiction to enter the other market.

Bank of England eases parts of its earlier stance

Britain has already adjusted some of its more restrictive ideas for systemic stablecoins after feedback from industry participants. In June, the Bank of England dropped proposed holding caps of £20,000 per coin for individuals and £10 million for businesses.

It replaced those user-level limits with a temporary issuance guardrail of £40 billion for each systemic stablecoin, allowing transactions without individual caps. The Bank also cut the portion of reserves that systemic issuers must keep as non-interest-bearing central bank deposits from 40% to 30%. Under the steady-state framework, the other 70% may be held in short-term UK government debt.

According to the article, these changes move the UK closer to the broad US-UK view that reserve requirements should protect holders without making stablecoin business models commercially impractical.

Next steps remain unsettled

For now, the cooperation amounts to policy alignment rather than a unified transatlantic regime. Several major questions remain unresolved, including how foreign-issued stablecoins will be treated, whether one jurisdiction will recognize the other’s regulatory standards, how reserves will be custodied and what procedures would apply if a cross-border issuer fails.

The next stage will depend on how US agencies apply the GENIUS Act in practice and whether the US and UK turn their shared principles into formal market-access arrangements. The Bank of England plans to finalize its code for systemic stablecoins by the end of 2026, and the Financial Regulatory Working Group is expected to meet again in early 2027. Until then, issuers are likely to remain subject to separate US and UK requirements.

Source: crypto.news