Crypto Bill Fails for Now, but Democratic Deal Remains Intact

[Passages]

Democrats didn’t want to be embarrassed into voting for something without seeing the bill text. When that gets ironed out, they are likely to say yes.

by David Dayen
May 8, 2025

Crypto executives suffered a temporary (but only temporary) setback today, when a cloture vote to advance a bill setting up a light-touch regulatory regime for stablecoins failed in the Senate. Democrats decided to vote against the bill because they had not seen final text.

But this doesn’t change the widespread expectation among people close to the process that Democrats will eventually agree to the GENIUS Act, once they have a piece of paper to wave around to claim that they made improvements to the package.

Last night, the Prospect reported, based on several sources, that Democrats had agreed to a modified version of the GENIUS Act, which would enable Big Tech firms to create their own private currencies. The main ask that Democrats secured was a vote on an amendment that would bar presidents and their families, senior executive branch officials, and members of Congress from issuing or sponsoring digital assets. This came after reports of Trump’s World Liberty Financial issuing a stablecoin, USD1, that was already being put into use by foreign countries to enrich the president’s company.

Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, and surely were not going to vote to rip away Trump’s crypto empire. After that, Democrats would supply the votes needed to avoid a filibuster and pass the bill, while saying that they did all they could to prevent Trump corruption.
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-08-crypto-bill-fails-democratic-deal-remains-intact/


Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies'
CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com › 2019/05/02 › joseph-stiglitz-w...
joseph stiglitz on crypto from www.cnbc.com
May 6, 2019 — Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-Prize winning economist, says cryptocurrencies should be shut down. He worries that they enable illicit activity