The Senate’s Crypto Bill Is Full of Holes… And Trump’s Driving a $2B Truck Through It

Crypto’s on an absolute heater right now. First, Coinbase got inducted into the S&P 500… And now, Washington just handed the industry a huge win. The Senate voted 66–32 to move forward on regulating stablecoins… cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the U.S. dollar to stay stable in price. They're not meant to hit $1 trillion in price by 2030 like Bitcoin (according to Mama Cathie), just to make digital payments faster and cheaper.And yeah, it wasn’t even close. A full-blown bipartisan spanking. 

Of course, no big Washington win comes without a meltdown… and this one was centered around the one and only Donald J. Trump For reference, World Liberty Financial, a firm with ties to the Trump family, launched a stablecoin earlier this year. Since March, it’s exploded past $2 billion in market value, with Trump leaning in hard. He even hosted a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago for the coin’s top holders. Critics say it looks like a workaround for shady donations… a cheat code for foreign actors and mega-donors to tip the potential future president without ever going through a bank (and they may have a point).

And get this, there’s nothing in the bill that stops him from doing it. Nothing that bars him, his family, or any official from launching or profiting off a crypto token… even while in office.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is not happy about it (quite the shock). On the Senate floor, she warned that this bill could turn stablecoins into “shadowy bank accounts”...  invisible to regulators, packed with anonymous money, and ripe for abuse. “For crooks, it’s a two-for-one,” she said. (One part campaign fund, one part offshore slush account… what’s not to love?) Her office also released a report outlining the risks: no real anti-money laundering provisions, no oversight to stop foreign governments from using stablecoins to interfere in U.S. politics, and no protection for consumers if the coin they’re holding goes belly up (because FDIC insurance doesn’t apply when your bank is a Discord server).

You’d think that would be enough to kill the bill. And it almost was. Just two weeks ago, every Senate Democrat (plus a couple Republicans) voted to block it. But then some classic weekend-in-Washington horse-trading happened. By Monday night, 16 Democrats flipped.

So what changed? Well, a few new amendments were slipped in to make the whole thing more palatable: consumer protections went up, Big Tech got told to sit this one out (sorry Zuck), and a temporary ethics clause was added that ropes in folks like Elon Musk and David Sacks (because I guess this was also about them now). There’s even a clause that bans current members of Congress and senior government officials from launching stablecoins while in office. Which for some reason doesn’t apply to our commander in chief.

That’s why Warren and a handful of others are still pushing hard to amend the bill. But not everyone agrees. Senator Mark Warner, one of the Democrats who helped negotiate the changes, admitted the bill’s got holes but said Congress can’t sit on its hands while other countries move forward. “It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than the status quo,” he said.

Behind the scenes, crypto was playing the long game. Over $40 million in lobbying cash was dumped into getting this bill across the line… including $10 million toward pro-crypto Democrats. Groups like Stand With Crypto made the bill their life mission. At the same time, the industry also launched a full-court press to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown, the crypto-skeptical chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and replace him with Bernie Moreno… a Republican blockchain entrepreneur (chess not checkers).

Retailers were also all-in. It wasn’t hard to get them on board considering they paid $187 billion in swipe fees last year and see stablecoins as a way to ghost Visa and Mastercard for good. Even though the final bill banned stablecoins from offering interest (a win for the banks, who didn’t want to compete with “Bank of USDC”), the payments industry still sees this as a necessary first step. Coinbase’s VP of public policy even called it a win “for Americans who want to make payments faster and easier to access.”

The Senate still has to vote on final passage (which, knowing Congress, probably won’t happen until after they’ve taken their Memorial Day naps. Then it’s off to the House, where a competing stablecoin bill is sitting around waiting for someone to care. Lawmakers will need to mash the two together before sending it to the White House) where it’ll land on the desk of President Trump, a man who already has a $2 billion stablecoin and zero chill. Odds are he signs it with one hand while live-streaming it on Truth Social, then mints the signature as an NFT and auctions it to his top token holders.

In the meantime, Elizabeth Warren and her crew are still swinging, planning to push amendments like the STABLE Act, which would ban candidates and elected officials from launching or cashing in on crypto coins. But with Republicans running the House, those proposals are headed straight for the legislative graveyard (somewhere between “Ban TikTok” and “Make Healthcare Suck Less”).

With Coinbase officially joining the big leagues and this stablecoin bill picking up steam, crypto investors are about to hit peak smug. If a bull run kicks off from here, get ready… every guy who once bought half a Dogecoin is about to start calling himself an “early adopter” again.

PS: It’s a mess out there.

One day the market’s ripping, the next day it’s Black Monday all over again. Recent earning’s reports have been a total coin flip. One stock beats and explodes 30%… the next misses by a penny and gets sent to the Shadow Realm. And through it all, everyone’s begging for Jerome Powell to finally cave and cut rates.

But underneath all the panic headlines (“Inflation too sticky!” “Recession imminent!” “Tariffs round 4 incoming!”) something wild is happening…

We’re seeing violent price action. Especially in the small-cap space, where low floats and high anxiety are creating the perfect recipe for 100%+ pops before lunchtime. Some of these names are moving 200%+ in under 24 hours… and to our knowledge, NO ONE else is covering them.

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