Congress, his eye on a futuristic form of funding, debates the legislation that legitimizes stablecoins, a specific type of cryptocurrency linked to the US dollar. But legislators wishing to make the auctions of this new industry ignore the transformation of the American regulatory system and allegations of corruption in the second Trump administration.
To the delight of Silicon Valley, Big Tech and Wall Street, in the week or two following, the Senate seems ready to approve the law on genius, a law which would give a legal blessing to Stablecoins. Despite the other bitter partisan conflicts that define American politics, a dozen Democratic senators seem ready to lock up arms with almost all Republicans to adopt the legislation.
According to the model since the New Deal created our modern independent financial regulators, the legislation would allow the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department and others to write small characters to implement the bill. Their work will be really important, because the stablecoins are, unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, supposed to have real US dollars behind them. Only regulators can guarantee this.
Legislation generally provides only a regulatory action framework. And there was once a great logic in the congress giving specialized regulators the discretionary power to use their best judgment.
But we live in 2025. The very idea of properly regulating finance, new or old, is besieged by the current administration, making the old delegation for agencies almost useless. For generations, the regulation of financial markets was based on independent regulators, isolated from economic and political pressures, to protect the integrity of markets for investors without fear or favor.
But President Trump – by undermining the independence of the agency, in dismissing certain regulators, by hitting others and by appointing sycophants – ended at that time. At the same time, Trump deregulation fanatics have canceled the existing guarantees, purged agency staff and abandoned the application.
Trump’s men – Cryptographic men – now direct regulators. The head of the Sec, Paul Atkins, led a company with an armada of cryptographic customers. The president’s candidate for the Comedity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller cryptography regulator, is Brian Quintenz, a lobbyist for Andreessen Horowitz, the pro-Trump venture capital company which is deep in the neck in cryptocurrency.
Trump himself is now a cryptographic pivot. Sell access to the president via Memecoin de Trump, a collection token, rightly has Scathing criticism. But Trump’s family vehicle, World Liberty Financial, has launched a stablecoin that could be vulnerable to the foreign grain. A company supported by the government of Abu Dhabi buys a value of $ 2 billion from the token. And at the end of last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission abandoned a case for Binance, an exchange of cryptocurrency which, in 2023, admitted that he made his eyes on money laundering and infringements to sanctions, a few days after Binance listed Trump’s stablecoin for trade.
These developments – the distortion of independent regulators in docile creatures of industry, the abandonment of market protection and investors and the determination of Trump to military the presidency of money – require a new legislative approach which specifically prescribes the regulatory railing necessary to achieve the legislative objectives. We have crossed a Rubicon, and now legislators must assume that regulators will simply acquire industry and political forces.
Today, Congress cannot simply write law as bankruptcy guidance; It must provide detailed and restrictive directives which oblige regulators to do their work. Otherwise, Trump’s current regulators will never establish the necessary guarantees that the Senate will envisage because difficult measures could threaten not only the cryptographic industry but also the personal companies of the president.
Until now, the Democrats of the Senate have been satisfied with settings at a time when a wholesale revision is necessary. How will customers be protected? How are we going to thwart crime and money laundering using stablecoins, already a serious problem? Will large technological companies become banks by issuing stablecoins?
Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Has almost admitted the gaps in legislation, noting that republican supporters refuse to allow “regular reforms how politicians can use these digital assets and others for their personal profit”. But Schiff intends to vote for the bill, as well as the Democratic sense Kirsten Gillibrand from New York and Angela Alsobrooks from Maryland.
Although they try to make laws for the future, their heads are stuck in the past, thinking when regulators could trust. For our current time, the members of the Congress must ensure that the legislation on cryptocurrencies contains clear, binding and normative railing to defend the public interest and fight against the growing risk of corruption. Currently, stable legislation contains only window clothing. Without a new approach, Congress legislate wealth for cryptographic titans – and Trump.
Patrick Woodall is the director general of policies at Americans for Financial Reform.
