Date: Wisconsin, June 28, 2025
When the Senate voted 68-30 last week to pass the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, or better known as the GENIUS Act, the moment barely registered in a news cycle crowded with updates from the Diddy trial, ominous talk of World War III, and who does and does have have nuclear warheads a in the Middle East. Yet the bill is poised to reshape American money itself, setting the stage for bank-issued digital dollars and a vastly expanded federal role in everyday payments that will impact every Americans for the next decade.
House leaders now plan to bundle the measure with a separate market-structure bill, the CLARITY Act, and move both to the floor in a single vote as early as the week of July 7. President Trump has already signaled he will sign the package “without delay.”
A $265 Million Campaign Pays Off
Passage caps the costliest crypto lobbying blitz on record. Industry groups and super PACs spent more than $265 million during the 2024 election cycle, which is nearly double the previous year, to elect crypto-friendly candidates and draft the very language that now governs them.
Much of that money flowed through Fairshake, a super PAC bankrolled by Coinbase, Ripple and venture fund a16z, which alone poured over $130 million into congressional races. Thirty-three of its thirty-five endorsed candidates won which ties them with AIPAC.
The bill’s corporate sponsors read like a who’s-who of finance:
JPMorgan Chase filed a trademark for JPMD, a deposit-backed token it can now launch on Coinbase’s Base network. PayPal and several regional banks lobbied for an exemption that lets them issue “payment stablecoins” under state charters. World Liberty Financial, the Trump-family venture behind the USD1 stablecoin, secured a new $100 million investment from a UAE fund days before the vote.
What the Bill Actually Does
This bill re-labels stablecoins as “payment systems,” taking them out of securities law and handing primary oversight to the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, creating an aura of legitimacy. It also creates a licensing moat: only banks and “permitted issuers” that meet 1-to-1 reserve, audit and AML rules can mint tokens—locking smaller DeFi projects outside the gate. Mandates monthly disclosures of reserves but allows issuers to hold short-term Treasuries, providing fresh demand for federal debt. Bars members of Congress and their immediate families from trading stablecoins—but notably leaves the White House exempt. Senator Elizabeth Warren called this “a loophole big enough to drive a truck full of crypto through.”
The Bipartisan Pattern: Crypto and Foreign Wars
The only other legislation that has moved this smoothly across party lines in recent years is foreign-aid spending for Ukraine and Israel. In April 2024 Congress passed a $95 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan with overwhelming majorities in both chambers, with all packages hovering over $300 billion in the last 5 years.
Critics argue the same donor class such as defense contractors abroad and crypto financiers at home, dictates both agendas. “If it involves new weapons or new money rails, Congress finds consensus,” says Sarah Bryer, a former Senate banking staffer now at watchdog group Public Citizen. “Everything else stalls.”
What Gets Missed While Washington Innovates
Poverty: The Supplemental Poverty Measure rose to 12.9 percent in 2023, the first increase in a decade. Homelessness: More than 770,000 Americans were unhoused on a single night in January 2024, the highest count ever recorded. Disaster Recovery: Communities from Maui to East Palestine still wait on promised federal funds years after their crises. To date the U.S. Congress has held nine hearings but passed no comprehensive relief bills for any of these victims.
Yet lawmakers devoted 18 months of hearings and four mark-ups to ensure banks can mint digital dollars.
A New Architecture for Control
Civil-liberties attorneys warn that putting money on permissioned blockchains invites mission creep. Once every transaction is traceable:
Payments can be geofenced or frozen at the click of a regulator’s dashboard. Political dissenters can be de-banked without ever seeing a courtroom. Cash’s untraceable refuge disappears, replaced by tokens that obey code written in Washington and often debugged on Wall Street.
Senator Warren, one of just eleven Democrats opposed, likened the bill to the 2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which green-lit credit-default swaps before the 2008 crash. “We’re repeating history,” she warned on the floor.
What Happens Next
If the House delivers the bill to President Trump before the July 4 recess, bank-branded stablecoins could hit the market within a year. JPMorgan’s JPMD pilot is ready; PayPal has quietly updated code to let its wallet swap into compliant tokens.
For ordinary Americans, the promise is faster payments, at least until the rules change. “Digital dollars are programmable,” notes Bryer. “Today they clear instantly. Tomorrow they refuse to buy a bus ticket to the wrong protest.”
The Bottom Line
The GENIUS Act is not just a regulatory tweak; it is the blueprint for a cashless, centrally mediated economy shaped by the largest banks, the loudest lobbyists and a White House with skin in the game. That it passed under the radar says as much about the media distractions of the moment as it does about the power of money in Washington.
As many households grapple with rising rents, increased living expenses, stubborn poverty and record homelessness, Congress has found rare harmony over who controls the future of money itself. When the dust settles, Americans may discover their new digital wallet comes with fewer rights than the battered leather one it replaced.
Nkozi Knight 