The White House’s AI and Crypto Czar, David Sacks, has said that the Trump administration is optimistic about the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act moving through the Senate after it regained momentum and bipartisan support.
The GENIUS Act faced a second cloture motion at the start of the week after an unsuccessful procedural vote two weeks ago, receiving only 49 out of the 60 votes required to advance to an open floor debate.
In the interview, Sacks affirmed that “Stablecoins offer a new, more efficient, cheaper, smoother payment system — new payment rails for the U.S. economy,” which increased the bill’s chances of passing the next legislative stages. “It also extends the dominance of the dollar online,” he added.
He noted that the sector already has over $200 billion in stablecoins despite being unregulated, which could suggest that clear regulations could significantly increase the market.
“If we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this, I think we could create trillions of dollars of demand for our Treasuries practically overnight, very quickly,” Sacks affirmed.
It’s worth noting that the bill underwent various amendments to tackle Democratic senators’ concerns, including stricter requirements for stablecoin issuers and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) provisions before the first cloture vote.
However, ten senators, including four Democrats who previously supported the bill, criticized the first revised version of the legislation, suggesting the draft omitted essential AML and national security safeguards and had ambiguous regulations that could expose crypto markets to exploitation.
Similarly, Senator Elizabeth Warren raised concerns about the president’s crypto ventures and urged Congress to reject the stablecoin bill, claiming it could pave the way for alleged “crypto corruption.”
As CNBC noted, Republican Senator Roger Marshall filed to add a “poison pill” amendment that would set price controls on credit card interchange fees and mandate that banks support multiple network options for processing transactions.
