Publicly traded tokenized deposit company USBC, Inc. said on Wednesday it had filed a comment letter supporting the FDIC’s proposed GENIUS Act rule while asking the agency to confirm that a third-party-operated blockchain can serve as a bank’s exclusive account-level ledger, and that smart contracts do not alter a product’s deposit status.
The June 9 filing targets a practical question for banks evaluating tokenized deposit products: whether they can rely on a blockchain-based ledger with continuous API access as their definitive deposit record, or whether they must also maintain a parallel traditional system. USBC asked the FDIC to say the blockchain-native model is sufficient for deposit insurance determination purposes on its own.
The FDIC’s April 7 proposal already stated that tokenized deposits remain deposits under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act regardless of the technology used to record them. USBC’s letter asks the agency to address ledger architecture and smart contract integration directly.
“The technology-neutral Section 330.1(e) amendment and new Section 330.3(k) give much-needed certainty that the technology or recordkeeping deployed by IDIs does not impact whether a deposit is a deposit,” said Greg Kidd, Chairman and CEO of USBC.
USBC is building a U.S. dollar-denominated tokenized deposit network and is running a limited pilot with affiliate Vast Bank, according to its filing.
