It didn't take long for President Donald Trump to join the cryptocurrency club.
In his first week back in the Oval Office, the president signed
A former
In the 100 days since the start of Trump's second term, crypto backers are still largely optimistic and pleased by the pace of progress.
"It's been extraordinary," Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, told American Banker. "The degree to which there's been coordination between Congress and the administration, and the methodical way by which they're moving ahead on the plan that they laid out and the president's executive order has been nothing short of impressive."
Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, said it was "thanks to the president's support for our industry" that progress was being made.
"The president has done our industry and the U.S. economy a huge favor,"
"The crypto industry is just the beginning — just like email was an early use case of the internet, what comes next is the tokenization of all equities, commodities, funds, derivatives and really all aspects of the financial system."
Early days
The "Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Finance Technology"
The working group was given 180 days per the executive order to submit a report to the president with legislative proposals and regulatory recommendations.
They hit the ground running: Sacks was on Capitol Hill a day after the signing of the initial executive order to deliver a press conference announcing one of the two primary crypto bills in Congress, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or
Sacks at the January press conference said crypto was a "week one priority" for the administration and the initial focus would be on passing stablecoin legislation. He told lawmakers he "look[ed] forward to working with each of you in creating a golden age in digital assets."
First priority: Stablecoins
Stablecoins are digital assets housed on blockchains that are
The idea is that linking the coins to real-world assets would make stablecoins less volatile. Still, stablecoins have previously de-pegged from the 1-to-1 ratio and some, like Tether, the largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume with a market capitalization of over $143 billion, have not always been upfront about what constitutes their fiat reserves.
Circle's USDC is the second-largest U.S.-pegged stablecoin with a market capitalization of more than $58 billion. Most of USDT (Tether) trading is done in Asia and Europe, whereas the majority of USDC is in North America.
Interest in stablecoins has ballooned in recent years, and long-awaited regulatory clarity in the U.S. has further driven that. The average number of stablecoins in circulation increased about 28% year-over-year for the last two years, according to the
Total transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion in 2024, surpassing the combined volume of Visa and Mastercard transactions last year.
"Stablecoins are now among the top 20 holders of U.S. Treasuries, and we are on track for stablecoins to become the largest method of holding U.S. Treasuries," Nazarov said. "This trend is something the president, the Treasury secretary, and the secretary of Commerce are clearly aware of and are taking steps to accelerate, because it benefits U.S. dollar dominance — a key topic for them. The president has accelerated the adoption of U.S.-backed stablecoins, strengthening U.S. dollar dominance."
Legislative state of play
Trump last month repeated his call for "simple, common-sense rules for stablecoins" in a speech to the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit in New York City.
There are two major bills in Congress about stablecoins, both of which have been passed out of committee: the STABLE Act in the House and the GENIUS Act in the Senate. The bills are largely similar — both would clarify that the digital assets are not securities and not under SEC jurisdiction, and each has options for issuers to be regulated at the state level rather than federal in some cases.
Additionally, both bills outline requirements for reserves, preventing issuers from using riskier assets as collateral. The GENIUS Act would allow money-market funds to be used, which critics note were bailed out by the federal government in 2008 and 2020.
The Senate Banking Committee voted 18-6 to advance the GENIUS Act to the full chamber vote in March with bipartisan support — nearly half of the Democrats on the committee joined the Republican majority in favor. The STABLE Act passed through the House Financial Services Committee at the beginning of the month also with bipartisan support. Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at Circle, was heartened by the votes.
"They're showing that this is a bipartisan priority," Disparte said to American Banker. "It's very encouraging again to see the continued consensus building around getting legislation across the finish line."
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., told Fox News earlier this month the bill was "done."
"I wanted within the first hundred days to have some crypto or digital asset legislation marked up and run through our committee," the senator said. "Good news is the GENIUS Act is stamped. Done. Heading to the Senate floor."
Adam Minehardt, a principal at FS Vector, said the big policy issues between the two bills have largely been settled, and it's just a question of how to get the legislation over the finish line.
"Market structure legislation is on the table and whether or not the stablecoin bill travels with it or independently will ultimately determine when it passes," Minehardt told American Banker.
Trump has stated his hopes that a stablecoin bill will be on his desk to sign before Congress' annual August recess. Bo Hines, the White House's executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets, reiterated that timeline at the D.C. Blockchain Summit in March.
"I think that we will deliver on the president's wishes to see these two bills on this desk before August recess," Hines said, speaking beside Tyler Williams, the counselor to the Treasury secretary on Digital Assets at the Treasury Department. "We're just pleased with the work that [Congress is] doing to expedite this process."
Coinbase's Shirzad said that by Washington, D.C., standards, passing the bill by the August recess is "lightning speed" but not out of the question with the pace that it's been progressing.
"We're very cautiously optimistic that it will all get done by the president's time frame," Shirzad said. "From [the White House's] perspective, the August time frame is not just a 'nice to have.' It was a very clear message that he expected this to be worked out and brought to him by then and I think there's enough support on the Hill to get that done."
The progress has led to increased interest from banks and non-banks about issuing stablecoins, Minehardt said.
"Depending on a bank's mix of deposits and loans, a stablecoin could be a viable option to generate net interest margin," he said.
Administrative approach
Crypto financiers saw opportunity in the Republican president's second stint in office after four years of what many in the industry thought to be aggressive actions against them by the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden in 2022 issued an executive order that instructed government agencies to study crypto and "take strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose." Around that time, the FDIC sent 24 pause letters to banks encouraging them to think twice before working with cryptocurrencies, a move people in the community refer to as "Choke Point 2.0."
The same year, the Securities and Exchange Commission set an accounting rule requiring listed companies to hold crypto assets for their clients on their balance sheets as liabilities. Congress sought to overturn that rule but Biden vetoed it.
Under Trump, both actions have been repealed.
The president appointed several crypto-friendly faces to key roles in the first days of his administration. In addition to Sacks as czar of crypto and artificial intelligence, Trump tapped Scott Bessent, a crypto-friendly hedge fund manager, to head the Treasury Department; Howard Lutnick, the crypto-booster and former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, to lead the Commerce Department; and Paul Atkins, known for his market-first policy approach, to chair the SEC.
The securities commission a day after Trump's inauguration announced the formation of a Crypto Task Force led by Hester Peirce, an SEC commissioner known as "Crypto Mom" online for her support of the industry and advocacy for innovation-first regulation. Under the new administration, the SEC dropped or suspended a slew of lawsuits against crypto companies including Coinbase and Robinhood. The SEC earlier this month declared most stablecoins are not securities and has announced intentions to take a different approach to regulation enforcement around digital assets.
"There is a material sea change," Disparte said, noting recent guidance issued by the Federal Reserve, the SEC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. "All of those policy signals are really showing us that even without the legislation, the tone at the top from the government and from agency heads really does matter, and that there is a queuing up of competitive interest and competitive opportunities in this market to get going."
A 21st century Bretton Woods
Proponents of stablecoins say they're key to maintaining dominance of the U.S. dollar.
"You will unleash an explosion of economic growth and with the dollar-backed stablecoins, you'll help expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar," Trump said at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit speech. "In many, many years to come it'll be at the top and that's where we want to keep it. We only want to keep it at the top, always."
Last week, the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund held their annual spring meetings in Washington, D.C. Both groups were formed after the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which established the standard of global currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar.
"The President has made clear, as has [Treasury] Secretary [Scott] Bessent," Disparte said. "[House Financial Services Committee] Chairman [French] Hill, who spoke at the Bretton Woods committee meeting right after me on the stage, made it clear also to an international body that the United States' strategy for dollar competitiveness in the 21st century is to regulate dollar-denominated payment stablecoins and to make that an extension of the payment system domestically and globally."
