06-18-2025 
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The United States Senate has made history by approving stablecoin legislation, a first for Congress, but uncertainty awaits the bill in the House of Representatives.
- Senate approves GENIUS without amendments
- House v Senate over legislation strategy
- CFTC chairman or lighthouse keeper?
- Gemini using CFTC as therapist
- How Dems got to ‘yes’ on GENIUS vote
On June 17, the Senate voted 68-30 in favor of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, marking the first time that the upper chamber of Congress has passed a bill governing digital assets and the first time either chamber has approved legislation governing stablecoins. The House passed a digital asset market structure bill (FIT21) last year that the Senate failed to take up before Congress adjourned for the 2024 elections.
Tuesday’s margin of victory was identical to last week’s cloture vote, with 18 Democrats voting ‘aye.’ The ever-expanding list of questionable crypto ventures linked to President Donald Trump and his family—including the launch of their own stablecoin (USD1) this spring—proved incapable of dissuading pro-crypto Dems from supporting the bill.
GENIUS was supported by all but two Republicans. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) opposed GENIUS because it allows private corporations to issue their own stablecoins. Hawley called this “a huge giveaway to Big Tech” and filed an amendment to limit tech firms’ stablecoin activities. But he said the language was “gutted” in the final GENIUS text, leaving only “window dressing” where concrete restrictions were intended.
GOP leadership refused to consider other amendments, disappointing those who’d been promised an open amendment process by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). Some GENIUS critics sought additional language to limit Trump’s ability to profit off a financial sector over which he has direct control, while other critics wanted stricter rules governing foreign-based stablecoin issuers like Tether (USDT).
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who helped steer GENIUS to the finish line, said the bill’s “long and winding journey … would have been much easier if the Trump family wasn’t so grossly involved in this emerging sector.” As for what tipped other Dems into the ‘aye’ camp, well, more on that at the bottom of this article.
One of the prime beneficiaries of GENIUS will be the U.S.-based Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL), the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, which is second only to Tether in terms of stablecoin market cap. Circle made its Nasdaq debut less than two weeks ago and the stock closed Tuesday down 1.3%, but news of GENIUS’s passage produced a nearly 3% bump in after-hours trading.
Tether has previously mused about launching a new U.S.-compliant stablecoin that would limit unwanted regulatory scrutiny on USDT, including subjecting its reserves to a third-party audit. While Circle execs tweeted effusive praise for the Senate on Tuesday, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino has so far tweeted only the word ‘GENIUS’ alongside some America-themed emojis and a brain.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued a celebratory tweet ahead of the GENIUS vote, claiming that the bill’s success could boost the overall stablecoin market to $3.7 trillion by the end of the decade. That’s nearly twice the $2 trillion market that Bessent predicted during a Senate hearing last week. Either figure would be a significant boost to the current cap of just $261.5 billion.
House v Senate for all the crypto marbles
All eyes now turn to the House of Representatives, where GENIUS may get a slightly cooler reception than Senate Republicans might prefer.
Politico reported that GOP leadership in both the House and Senate are of two minds when it comes to how best to proceed. The House reportedly favors combining stablecoin legislation with a comprehensive market structure bill like the House’s Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which has already cleared multiple markup sessions.
The Senate has yet to introduce its own market structure bill and leadership would prefer getting a conference committee to quickly negotiate the differences between GENIUS and the House’s STABLE Act, which met with approval from the Financial Services Committee (FSC) but has yet to hit the House floor. The Senate reportedly wants a quick ‘win’ on stablecoins to distract from its squabbles with the House over Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ spending bill.
House crypto boosters like Warren Davidson (R-OH) told Politico the Senate “clearly doesn’t… have the consensus built to deal with market structure.” Davidson favors bundling stablecoins, market structure and a ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDC) into a single bill that the House can send the Senate.
As FSC Chair French Hill (R-AR) told Fox Business last week: “Both these bills are very, very important to the goal of a digital asset for the future of the U.S. You can’t just pass a stablecoin bill and have any place to effectively use it. You need the CLARITY Act to give us that market framework.”
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), the driving force behind GENIUS, warned that if his stablecoin bill was modified by the House to include market structure language (and whatever else), “it would have to come back to the Senate for a lot of work.”
The House breaks for the summer in the last week of July, while the Senate’s last day is August 1. That makes a tight timeline for both chambers to coalesce around a strategy, harmonize bill language, and get something to the president’s desk for signing by Labor Day.
CFTC chairman or lighthouse keeper?
CLARITY would hand the bulk of crypto oversight to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), with a far smaller role for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But questions remain as to whether the chronically understaffed and underfunded CFTC is up to the task.
Brian Quintenz, Trump’s nominee to lead the CFTC, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, but once he is, he’ll find only half the usual number of commissioners to help oversee all things crypto (and the two that remain aren’t sticking around). That one-man-show could continue should the president not bother to fill those four empty commissioner seats, prioritizing ‘efficiency’ over consensus building.Trump has long disdained the norms of seeking Congressional approval of key agency appointments, often using the ‘acting’ designation to sidestep longstanding advise & consent protocols, appointing new ‘acting’ execs when the original appointee’s grace period expires.
A new Bloomberg article notes that there’s nothing that legally compels Trump to fill the empty chairs anytime soon, which would empower Quintenz to make unilateral decisions on everything from regulatory matters to signing CFTC office leases, as well as dealing with letters from aggrieved stakeholders.
Gemini seeks, er, something from CFTC
Speaking of angry missives, the CFTC just received a nasty letter from attorneys representing brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their Gemini exchange. The letter takes issues with the conduct of lawyers representing the agency’s Division of Enforcement (DOE) for bringing “dubious false statements charges” against Gemini.
By way of background, in January, Gemini reached a $5 million settlement with the CFTC regarding the 2022 civil complaint accusing Gemini of “making false or misleading statements of material facts” regarding a BTC-based exchange-traded product (ETP). The complaint accused two unspecified individuals—who may or may not have been the Winklevii—of loaning “thousands” of BTC at artificially low rates to market-makers to ensure the ETP’s trading volume met CFTC standards.
Gemini’s letter accused DOE staff of having “selectively and unfairly weaponized the Commodity Exchange Act” against the company. Gemini claims the DOE’s original sin was taking seriously “a false whistleblower report” filed by its former chief operating officer Benjamin Small.
Gemini claims Small was fired for hiding the existence of “a multi-million dollar rebate fraud perpetrated by two Gemini Trust customers.” Following his dismissal, Small allegedly vowed to “destroy” Gemini and filed the report that Gemini claims convinced the CFTC to launch a probe into the exchange’s operations in 2018.
The company’s letter to CFTC Inspector General Christopher Skinner doesn’t ask the regulator to do much, except to act on reforms proposed last month by soon-to-be-ex-commissioner Caroline Pham (who is serving as acting chairman while Quintenz warms the bench). Other than that, the letter is simply a list of grievances detailing how unfairly Gemini feels it was treated at the CFTC’s hands.
It’s possible that Gemini might be seeking to claw back some or all of that $5 million settlement, taking advantage of the 180° attitude shift towards digital assets by federal agencies since Trump took his oath of office in January.
If that’s the case, Gemini could be taking their cue from Ripple Labs, which last August was ordered to pay the SEC $125 million for violating securities laws. Since Trump’s election, Ripple has teamed up with the SEC’s new management to press the judge to return $75 million of that sum to Ripple. (The SEC dropped its civil complaint against Gemini in February.)
While the climate for crypto operators has indeed undergone a sea change at the federal level, it’s perhaps notable that Gemini has yet to file a similar complaint with the New York Attorney General’s office, which in June 2024 fined Gemini $50 million for defrauding investors of the Gemini Earn program. But New York Attorney General (NYAG) Letitia James isn’t Trump’s biggest fan, and she doesn’t appear to feel any need to apologize to crypto operators who fail to color within the lines.
Fearing crypto cash, Dems go with the flow
On June 16, The Lever reported on a private group chat on the encrypted Signal messaging platform featuring Democratic Party operatives and crypto lobbyists. The chats expose the naked self-interest behind some Dems’ positions on crypto legislation like GENIUS, as many Dems see Trump’s self-interested dealings all too clearly but calculate that publicly opposing the well-funded crypto sector will kill their electability.
The ‘Dem Crypto Policy Roundtable’ chat group reportedly includes Capitol Hill staff, Democratic National Committee members, lobbyists, venture capitalists (including Paradigm and Electric Capital reps), and lawyers for major crypto firms. The chats reportedly discussed various crypto bills, including GENIUS and CLARITY.
The Crypto Council for Innovation’s Sheila Warren is quoted saying “Trump’s corruption is manifesting dramatically in crypto,” and advising “ordinary” Dems running in the 2026 midterm elections to “stay away from crypto apart from being vaguely supportive.” Dems on committees were given the option to “flag the corruption and be a pro-crypto anti-corruption candidate.”
Crypto lawyer Jason Gottlieb suggested it was pointless for Dem senators to performatively file anti-corruption amendments to GENIUS, saying such efforts “will be doa [dead on arrival].” Gottlieb reasoned that “[n]obody is going to get primaried because they voted for GENIUS.”
Gottlieb said if Dems want to win the next election they “can not [sic] afford to alienate a very vocal and wealthy group of donors.” Electric Capital managing partner Avichal Garg put a finer point on it, saying if Dems didn’t vote for GENIUS “they will get 0 dollars going forward. It would be political suicide for them not to support it.”
The crypto sector is clearly adopting a stick-and-carrot approach, as Bloomberg reported Tuesday on the number of Dem-adjacent individuals and companies being hired to advance crypto’s cause. This includes Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) adding Kamala Harris campaign advisor David Plouffe to its Global Advisory Council last week, Tether hiring a lobbying firm run by former staffers to President Joe Biden, and venture capital giants Andreessen Horowitz hiring former Dem staffer Michael Reed as its new government affairs partner.
Bloomberg quoted NYU adjunct professor Austin Campbell (also CEO of digital payment platform WSPN) saying the hires were a reflection of crypto’s understanding that the Dems might not always be in the minority.
“If you made this industry explicitly partisan, boy do you have a problem.”
Incidentally, Campbell was also in the Signal group chat, where he said opposing GENIUS would make voters see Dems as “pro-bank.” Campbell also warned that calling out Trump’s crypto corruption only makes him “stronger, not weaker.” Faced with America’s first Borg president, it seems resistance really is futile.
Watch: Breaking down solutions to blockchain regulation hurdles
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