The U.S. Senate passed a key procedural vote on Wednesday to advance the country’s first-ever stablecoin regulation, a landmark moment for crypto in Washington.
Dubbed the GENIUS Act — short for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 Act — the legislation has bipartisan backing, making final Senate passage all but guaranteed.
“We want to bring cryptocurrency into the mainstream, and the GENIUS Act will help us do that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune wrote on X. “It’s time to pass this bill.”
President Trump also supports the legislation and is expected to sign it once it hits his desk.
The bill lays out rules for U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins, requiring one-to-one reserve backing in liquid assets like Treasuries and oversight by federal or state regulators.
Democratic critics say the bill doesn’t go far enough on consumer protection and may open the door to financial crime.
More controversially, there are no provisions preventing President Trump from profiting from his own crypto holdings.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren raised red flags after a Wall Street Journal report detailed a case involving a Russian national charged with laundering $530 million through stablecoins like Tether.
“The GENIUS Act includes a massive loophole that allows Tether to evade basic safeguards,” Warren warned on X. “It must not move forward without real fixes.”
Nevertheless, the bill received support from several crypto-friendly Democrats, including Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Mark Warner, and Kirsten Gillibrand, helping solidify the bill’s bipartisan momentum.
A game-changer for mainstream crypto doption?
For the crypto industry, the GENIUS Act is more than just regulatory clarity. Analysts say it could be one of the biggest catalysts yet for mass adoption.
“Stablecoins now present what I believe is the first credible opportunity to onboard a billion people into crypto,” said Daren Matsuoka, a data scientist at a16z’s crypto arm.
According to Matsuoka, stablecoins have settled $33 trillion in transactions over the past year, dwarfing PayPal and even approaching the volume of ACH bank transfers.
“To put that into perspective, that’s close to 20 times the volume of PayPal, close to 3 times the volume of Visa,” he wrote.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told Bloomberg TV in February that BofA would issue its own stablecoin if Congress legalizes it.
“A dollar-backed stablecoin would be no different than a money market fund,” he said. “And so if they make that leap, we’ll go into that business.”
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has also confirmed the company is studying stablecoins to reduce friction in cross-border payments.
Meanwhile, Circle (CRCL) — the issuer of the USDC stablecoin — just made a blockbuster debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
After pricing its IPO at $31, the stock exploded to $83 on its first trading day, and by Wednesday, it reached $117, up nearly 250% in just two days.
This marks the biggest post-IPO spike since 1980.
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