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Digital Chamber Gets New Chief as Crypto Lobbyists Embrace Friendlier Washington

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2 месяца ago

19 марта, 2025

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The Digital Chamber will elevate Cody Carbone to be its chief executive officer next month, replacing founder Perianne Boring, who is stepping down after a decade atop the oldest U.S. crypto advocacy group.

As it prepares for its latest Washington, D.C., blockchain summit next week, the Digital Chamber informed its members that Boring will be moving to chair the organization’s board while Carbone — a longtime crypto policy presence — takes over as CEO. The group’s transition coincides with the long-awaited shift in the U.S. government from digital assets reluctance to an embrace from President Donald Trump and an enthusiastic Congress.

«We’re no longer in a defensive stance, where we have a government that’s essentially trying to shut down the industry,» Boring said in a CoinDesk interview.

Digital assets are enjoying a wave of U.S. government support, with a presidential summit at the White House earlier this month and signs of progress in the Senate and House of Representatives, which both easily advanced a crypto matter in recent days. But the two core bills — the regulation of stablecoins and the setting of guardrails for the overall industry — represent the ultimate goal to establish crypto as a full-fledged, regulated corner of the U.S. financial system.

That means Carbone, formerly the Digital Chamber’s chief policy officer, will seek to have a hand in the stablecoin and crypto market-structure legislation brewing in Congress now.

«We haven’t gotten anywhere, yet,» Carbone told CoinDesk this week. The industry has, during his predecessor’s years of lobbying, been «constantly addressing misconceptions, bad narratives, fighting back against the government.» Despite the new political success, «sky-high» expectations from crypto enthusiasts and well-placed support across the government, the organization has to «focus all of our efforts on meeting those expectations, getting the policies enacted that we want.»

The sector’s first legislative accomplishment during Carbone’s tenure may be the reversal of an Internal Revenue Service rule that would have treated decentralized financial (DeFi) projects as brokerages that needed to keep tabs on their users for tax purposes. Lawmakers are tapping their powers under the Congressional Review Act to roll back the Biden-administration rule, and major surges of Democratic support helped the resolution clear both chambers, so it’s only awaiting a procedural second approval from the Senate before heading to Trump’s desk to be signed.

That would mark the inaugural pro-crypto effort to wind its way successfully to a U.S. president’s signature, but the other legislation is Carbone’s top aim, and he predicted it’ll happen this year.

«Cody really shines on that execution,» Boring said. «So that is the immediate priority, executing all the things we’ve spent the past year or the past decade building and getting those done.»

The digital assets space has a crowded field of lobbying groups stalking the halls of the Capitol, White House and the regulatory agencies. The Digital Chamber is among the most prominent of them and has the most members, though its budget has been outpaced by the Blockchain Association in recent years.

The list of advocacy and educational organizations also includes the Crypto Council for Innovation, Coin Center, DeFi Education Fund and others, including the brand new association launched by Ripple Labs, the National Cryptocurrency Association, which is being backed by a massive $50 million grant.

Boring said she has no immediate commitment for a role outside the organization

«My next step is really kind of exploring additional passions that I have in the crypto space,» she said.

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Hong Kong Joins Global Race With New Stablecoin Licensing Bill

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2 часа ago

21 мая, 2025

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Hong Kong passed a stablecoin bill that will enable the region to establish a licensing regime for fiat-backed stablecoin issuers.

«Hong Kong’s stablecoins are backed by fiat currency as underlying assets, and we welcome global enterprises and institutions interested in issuing stablecoins to apply in Hong Kong,» legislative council member Johnny Ng said on X on Wednesday.

Institutions are expected to be able to apply for a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority by the year-end.

Hong Kong has been working on establishing a stablecoin regime since 2023. The nation had published a consultation paper on stablecoin guidelines towards the end of 2023. It later introduced the Stablecoin Bill, which the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passed in its third reading, Ng’s post said.

The region has been looking to keep up with nations around the world that have been establishing their stablecoin regimes. The European Union started licensing stablecoin issuers last year after passing its wide-ranging bespoke crypto bill, called the Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCa). Meanwhile, the U.S. has a stablecoin bill that is passing through Congress, and the U.K. has been gathering feedback on draft legislation that will also affect stablecoins.

The stablecoin sector has become the hottest trend in recent years, with both crypto and TradFi firms ramping up their exposure to the industry. Ben Reynolds, BitGo’s managing director of stablecoins, said at Consensus 2025 that large banks are increasingly taking notice of the industry, largely out of fear that they will lose market share to the digital dollars.

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Sam Altman’s World Raises $135M in Token Sale to a16z and Bain Capital Crypto

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2 часа ago

21 мая, 2025

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Sam Altman’s blockchain project World Network has raised $135 million in a private token sale of its WLD token.

The sale was to venture capital giants a16z and Bain Capital Crypto and will be used to fund network expansion, the team shared.

WLD is higher by 14% on the news.

The funding comes as the group behind the blockchain announced the project’s in-app functionalities as well as the WLD token has become available as of earlier this month to U.S. users.

“To meet increasing demand for Orb-verified World IDs and support the expansion of the World network throughout the U.S. and beyond, World Assets, Ltd. (a subsidiary of the World Foundation) sold $135M of WLD at market prices to two of the project’s earliest backers, Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Crypto. The circulating supply of WLD has thus increased correspondingly,” the team wrote in a blog post.

The WLD token was created at launch in July 2023, and it currently has a market capitalization of $1.87 billion and is up 55% in the last month, according to CoinMarketCap. WLD though is down roughly 75% from its all time high.

Until earlier this month, U.S. users were unable to use World’s primary product, their orbs, a bowling ball-shaped device that scans a person’s eyeballs to confirm their identity. Once they scan, users can access the World app and receive an airdrop of the WLD token, which can then be used in World’s miniapps ecosystem.

During the announcement earlier this month, Altman shared that the project hopes to have to give 180 million Americans access to Orbs, more than half the country’s population, by the end of the year.

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Bitcoin Overtakes Amazon as the Fifth Largest Asset, Hitting $2.16T Market Cap

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3 часа ago

21 мая, 2025

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Bitcoin BTC became the world’s fifth-largest asset after hitting a new all-time high on Wednesday, which pushed its market cap to $2.16 trillion.

Though the crypto’s price consolidated lower after hitting a high of $109,400, its market cap passed Amazon (AMZN), which stands at $2.15 trillion.

Bitcoin is up 16.44% year-to-date while shares of the online retailer are down about 8% over the same period. It is currently trading at $108,954.

(CompaniesMarketCap)

Gold is the largest asset, by far, standing at a $22 trillion market cap, followed by Microsoft (MSFT), NVIDIA (NVDA) and Apple (AAPL) which stand at $3.1 trillion to $3.4 trillion respectively.

As a result of the surge in bitcoin’s price since the win of U.S. President Donald Trump, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) recently became the fifth-largest exchange-traded fund (ETF) by inflows this year as it took in roughly $9 billion from investors, according to data from Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.