President Donald Trump signed America’s first major piece of crypto legislation into law Friday, greenlighting the issuance and trading of stablecoins in the United States. At a ceremony held in the White House’s East Room, attended by many of the crypto industry’s most politically connected leaders, Trump hailed the signing of the bill, dubbed the GENIUS Act, as a major accomplishment of his second term.
“I pledged that we would bring back American liberty and leadership, and make the United States the crypto capital of the world,” said Trump, “and that’s what we’ve done.”Trump used the opportunity to highlight other crypto moves he’s made since returning to the White House, including signing an executive order to establish a Bitcoin reserve and digital asset stockpile, along with pardoning Bitcoin icon and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. He also restated his pledge to ensure the U.S. will not have a central bank digital cy, or CBDC, which he signed an executive order in January to ban.
The event was attended by numerous crypto industry heavyweights, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, Kraken Co-CEO Dave Ripley, and Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. Vice President JD Vance was also present for the signing, along with new SEC Chair Paul Atkins and SEC Commissioners Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce. Trump also called out the presence of Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, as well as David Sacks, the chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Sacks spoke to the crowd following President Trump’s initial comments.
“The first six months of this administration have been more successful than any administration in history, in terms of what’s been done,” said Sacks. “It’s just been incredible. President Trump has worked at ‘tech speed.’ We’re used to working fast in Silicon Valley, but even this is fast for us in Silicon Valley.” Stablecoins are digital assets, typically pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar, that are designed to remain steady in price and allow crypto traders to easily enter and exit positions without accessing dollars directly. They are thus considered a key ramp between crypto markets and traditional finance.
Now signed into law, the GENIUS Act—which establishes a framework for issuing and trading stablecoins—is poised to unlock tremendous interest in crypto from banks, traditional finance players, and major retailers, which have all in recent months expressed great interest in adopting and issuing stablecoins. These companies, however, have generally wanted to wait to move forward with stablecoin-related projects until the sector received the blessing of the federal government. Now it has.
“Stablecoins are at a turning point,” Jesse McWaters, Mastercard’s head of global policy, said in a statement shared with Decrypt. “The passage of the GENIUS Act by the U.S. Congress signals a new era of regulatory clarity and confidence in digital assets.” The Trump administration, congressional Republicans, and crypto industry leaders have all taken victory laps in the hours since the GENIUS Act passed the House yesterday.
While the bill was widely expected to pass with bipartisan support—and ultimately did—a themed “Crypto Week” on Capitol Hill was nearly derailed days ago when a faction of right-wing Republicans tanked procedural votes on multiple digital asset-focused bills, pro-crypto Democrats pilloried the legislation from the left, and some crypto advocates attacked the bills as not favorable enough to their industry. While the GENIUS Act firmly legalizes the stablecoin sector, much of the crypto industry still remains in relative legal limbo, despite decisively favorable actions recently taken by regulators including the SEC.
A separate crypto market structure bill, considered the top prize of crypto’s most powerful companies, would firmly legalize most crypto activity, and is currently making its way through Congress—though its odds of passage have long been considered more daunting than the less expansive stablecoin bill today. On Thursday, however, a market structure bill handily passed a vote in the House, garnering the support of nearly all Republicans and 78 Democrats.
Alongside excitement over the signing of the GENIUS Act, industry proponents remained focused on the next challenge, one many consider to be more important to their business interests: passing sweeping market structure legislation. “We should celebrate a little bit, but we also don’t think that anyone’s being complacent,” Robinhood CEO Tenev told Decrypt on Friday. “It’s a big step, but of course, it’s not the end of it. We want to have clarity around tokenizing securities. And private equity is something we care about quite a bit.”
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