BlackRock Calls on U.S. OCC to Drop Proposal to Limit Tokenized Reserve Assets

BlockBeats News, May 3rd, BlackRock submitted a comment letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), opposing several reserve asset restrictions proposed in the draft rules implementing the GENIUS Act. This 17-page response was submitted on the last day of the OCC’s 60-day public comment period, which began on March 2nd when the draft was published in the Federal Register. The regulatory agency posed over 200 questions covering aspects such as reserve composition, capital requirements, custody, and yield bans.

BlackRock’s comments mainly focus on rules related to "Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuers" (PPSI). These entities are federally chartered institutions authorized to issue stablecoins after the law was signed by Trump in July last year. The core request is that BlackRock urges the OCC not to set a cap on the amount of tokenized reserve assets. Previously, regulators had suggested a possible 20% limit. BlackRock believes such restrictions are "irrelevant" to the OCC’s regulatory objectives and points out that risk levels depend on the credit quality, duration, and liquidity of the assets, "not whether the assets are held or transferred on a distributed ledger."

This stance is also closely related to BlackRock’s strategic positioning in the tokenization space. Its BUIDL fund is one of the largest tokenized U.S. Treasury products, with an asset size close to $2.6 billion, according to RWA.xyz data, and provides over 90% reserve backing for Ethena’s USDtb and Jupiter’s JupUSD on Solana. Meanwhile, Circle’s USYC currently leads the industry with approximately $2.9 billion in assets under management.