US Treasury Closes Stablecoin Comment Period as Crypto Rallies 2.39% to $2,391

Treasury Closes Stablecoin Comment Window

Payment stablecoin issuers, the exchanges that would distribute their tokens and foreign-issued stablecoins seeking access to the United States market are the populations the Treasury's draft rules address, and the comment period on that proposal has now closed. The proposal, drafted as follow-up rulemaking under the GENIUS Act, enumerates the parties it intends to govern: issuers seeking authorization to mint payment stablecoins, trading venues that would distribute those tokens, and foreign stablecoins applying for entry to the US market. Reserve requirements sit at the center of the draft, joined by due diligence obligations for venues that list the instruments, and issuer authorization remains the gate every distributor ultimately passes through. The procedure reaches past paperwork: stablecoins anchor both trading float and payment infrastructure, so once the rules' direction is fixed, fund flows across exchanges, issuers and decentralized finance can move with them. Comments filed during the window now form the record Treasury weighs before drafting the final version; nothing binds an issuer or an exchange until the adopted text publishes with its effective dates.

Prices answered within hours. Ethereum (ETH) gained 2.39% over 24 hours to $2,391, ahead of Bitcoin's 1.16% advance to $81,745, and the strength spread through large-cap altcoin rotation: XRP added 3.20%, Solana 3.10%, Dogecoin 3.72% and BNB 2.86%, while Tron slipped 0.18%. Share data pointed the same way. Bitcoin's market cap dominance fell 0.17 percentage points to 60.22% in a day, and Ethereum's rose 0.10 points to 10.70%, a drift from defensive large-cap exposure toward extension assets. Traders watching whether the $2,391 level holds can follow our Ethereum technical analysis.

Ethereum Shorts Absorb $87.93 Million

Derivatives markets registered the regulatory development faster than spot books did. Aggregate derivatives turnover reached $710.1 billion across the 24-hour window, up 49.13%, against total crypto spot volume of $72.1 billion, so short-dated directional betting grew far faster than cash trading. Liquidations totaled $186 million, and 69.87% of the positions unwound were shorts, the signature of a grind higher that hit bearish bets first. Ethereum carried the heaviest load: $87.93 million in liquidations, 82% of them short positions, against $57.12 million for Bitcoin at a 57% short share. The regulatory event supplied the trigger, but position structure did the damage; traders using margin trading to fade the rally were flushed before long holders felt any stress. The imbalance also leaves room on the other side, since nearly seven of every ten forced dollars came from shorts and long positions were not the ones being disciplined. DeFi gauges revived in parallel: DeFi volume hit $10.5 billion, up 22.96%, and stablecoin turnover reached $78.3 billion, up 51.05%, evidence that idle balances rotated into short-term trading and portfolio reallocation at the same time. Institutional plumbing added its own beat, as CME launched a futures contract on Uniswap, the DeFi protocol built from smart contracts, with trading running seven days a week around the clock, and the CFTC filed a rebuttal document in the litigation over CME's perpetual futures regulatory policy. Corporate accumulation continued at a measured pace, with Strategy disclosing $22.1 million in additional Bitcoin purchases over the past week at an average of $82,900. One macro variable pressed from above: WTI crude futures crossed $100 per barrel on Middle East tensions, leaving an inflation-and-rates ceiling over risk assets.

Who the Draft Leaves Outside

The perimeter of the proposal, not the price tape, will decide whether this rotation lasts. The draft binds payment stablecoin issuers and their distribution venues once adopted; it binds no one today, and the adopted text will carry the effective dates. Decentralized protocols that neither mint nor distribute payment stablecoins stay outside the licensing perimeter, and the treatment of foreign-issued stablecoins stays open until the final version lands. Ethereum's 2.39% gain, its Ethereum's dominance rise of 0.10 points and its outsized liquidation share all price in regulated payment rails being assembled on public chains, rails JPMorgan already uses after expanding JPM Coin to Ethereum, and rails corporate buyers back, with Bitmine's Ethereum stash alone at 6.04 million tokens, 4.9% of supply. That edge is the part readers most often misjudge: outside the perimeter, nothing is licensed and nothing is settled.