U.S. stablecoin legislation took another major step on Wednesday as a House of Representatives committee joined Senate counterparts in advancing a bill to be considered by the overall House, bringing stablecoin regulations closer to reality.

Eventual approvals in both the overall House and Senate would let lawmakers start melding the two versions into a unified piece of legislation that could get a final nod. Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump have aimed toward an August goal in getting the effort completed.

Though the crypto industry and their most reliable Republican allies in Congress were happy to welcome many Democrats to the yes side on moving the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy (STABLE Act) out of the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday, the Democrats on the panel consistently raised concerns about Trump’s connections to the industry and stablecoins. Still, five Democrats joined 27 Republicans on the committee to advance the bill after a marathon markup session.

A week before the House committee focused on the bill in Wednesday’s markup — a session in which lawmakers make changes and debate amendments on legislation — the Trump-tied World Liberty Financial (WLFI) announced it’s supporting its own stablecoin (USD1). Trump has been highly active in crypto, including in selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and memecoin $TRUMP, even as he pushes for crypto-friendly policies at the federal level.

U.S. regulation of stablecoins — generally dollar-tied tokens, such as Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC — is one of the two top policy priorities for the industry. And committee Chairman French Hill argued on the industry’s behalf that «innovation needs guardrails, not roadblocks.»

Republican members declined to discuss President Trump’s industry involvement in any explicit terms. When Waters and other Democrats pushed amendments to block the potential conflicts raised by the president’s business interests and his direct authority over regulators who would make decisions about stablecoins, they were rejected by the panel’s Republicans, who repeatedly called such protections «unnecessary.»

«We don’t discriminate on entrepreneurs based on who they are and where they come from,» Hill said. If the government wants clear guardrails around this space, he repeatedly argued, the best move is to pass the bill that establishes oversight.

Representative Maxine Waters, the senior Democrat on the panel, said that Trump «leveraged the power of the presidency to establish multiple crypto schemes to enrich himself and his family,» calling it a «display of greed.»

«He’s unlike any other issuer, because he’s the president of the United States,» said Representative Stephen Lynch, the ranking Democrat on the panel’s digital assets subcommittee, who argued Trump would be in a position to sign off on any government help needed by his own business interests were they to fail. «If this was a Democratic president who was trying to do this, the Republicans’ hair would be on fire, and rightly so. This should not be happening.»

Another Democrat, Illinois Representative Sean Castin, argued that Tron’s Justin Sun has put tens of millions of dollars into WLFI for no clear return other than its relationship to the Trump family. He contended that government officials tied to stablecoins could be influenced by foreign investors in a way that’s hidden from public scrutiny.

The Democratic arguments failed to move the committee’s Republican majority, so no new amendments stuck to the effort. Supporters have said this House version is largely parallel to the Senate’s. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican, said the House version properly maintains sufficient authority in the hands of state regulators, which offers a «lighter touch, at times.»

«We have an administration that is ready to embrace these products, and the time is now,» Huizenga said.

This was one of a few bills before the House Financial Services Committee dealing with crypto-tied topics. Another piece of legislation debated on Wednesday was one that would form a cross-government group of law-enforcement agencies to address illicit crypto use and another that would ban U.S.-issued central bank digital currency (CBDC). Lawmakers also voted on dozens of amendments to the stablecoin bill before voting to advance the bill itself, prompting Rep. Lynch to joke that the panel may have set a record for the most failed votes in a row.

The cross-government bill, the Financial Technology Protection Act, passed with unanimous support, 49-0. The anti-CBDC bill passed with 27 votes, with 22 lawmakers voting against.

Though lawmakers initially had issues with their electronic voting system, they began making good time after starting votes near 10:30 p.m. ET – nearly 12.5 hours after the markup began. Voting on all five bills wrapped up by 11:15 p.m. ET.

As the stablecoin bill continues to move forward, Trump is also poised to sign the first pro-crypto congressional action: a resolution that erases an Internal Revenue Service rule that targeted decentralized finance (DeFi) operations. The president is expected to sign the resolution, though he hasn’t announced a schedule to do so.

UPDATE (March 3, 2025, 01:15 UTC): Adds vote totals.

Crypto exchange Kraken has registered as a restricted dealer in Canada, allowing the exchange to continue offering crypto trading services to Canadian users under the country’s evolving regulatory framework.

The registration, announced on Tuesday, comes after a multi-year process that required exchanges to meet higher standards for investor protection and governance. Kraken said it worked closely with Canadian regulators during this pre-registration phase, upgrading its compliance systems and internal controls to meet expectations set by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC).

To lead its Canadian expansion, Kraken named Cynthia Del Pozo as general manager for North America. Del Pozo, a fintech and operations veteran, will oversee strategy, regulatory engagement and business development across the region.

“Canada is at a turning point for crypto adoption,” said Del Pozo in a statement, pointing to growing interest from both retail and institutional investors. A recent survey cited by Kraken found that 30% of Canadian investors currently hold crypto assets.

Kraken also announced it will offer free Interac e-Transfer deposits for Canadian users, a move aimed at reducing friction for newcomers to the platform. The exchange claims it doubled its team and user base in Canada over the last two years and now manages over $2 billion CAD in client assets.

Mayur Gupta, Kraken’s chief marketing officer and general manager of growth, will be speaking at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 in Toronto on May 14-15.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Ben Schiller.

In this issue:

Vana launches token standard

Hashgraph to debut private blockchain

ASICs will look more like servers

An interview with Gensyn’s Ben Fielding

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.

Network News

VANA’S DATA-BACKED TOKEN STANDARD: Crypto enthusiasts might have heard of the ERC-20 token standard, which provides guidelines to ensure that tokens created on the Ethereum smart contract blockchain are compatible and can interact with other tokens and applications within the network. A similar standard for data-backed tokens, called VRC-20, has now emerged. Vana, an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that helps users monetize personal data by bundling it into DataDAOs for AI model training, introduced the new standard early this week to boost trust and transparency in the market for data-backed digital assets. The VRC-20 standard design includes specific criteria such as fixed supply, governance, and liquidity rules while ensuring real data access by tying tokens to actual data utility. Additionally, it promotes continuous liquidity through rewards that ensure market stability. «This isn’t speculation. This is real financialization of data,» Vana noted on X. Vana launched its mainnet in December, with VANA as its native cryptocurrency. Since then, the network has onboarded over 12 million data points through multiple DataDAOs, reflecting strong demand for user-owned data. DataDAOs or data liquidity pools are decentralized marketplaces that bring data on-chain as transferable digital tokens. DLPs are where data is contributed, tokenized and made ready for use in applications such as AI model training. — Omkar Godbole Read more.

HASHGRAPH LINES UP Q3 PRIVATE CHAIN: Hashgraph, the blockchain development firm focusing on the Hedera (HBAR) network, is building a private, permissioned blockchain for enterprises in highly regulated industries with plans to debut in the third quarter of 2025. HashSphere, built with Hedera’s technology, aims to bridge private and public distributed ledgers, ensuring compliance with regulations while maintaining interoperability, the company said Monday. Hashgraph is looking to provide services to asset managers, banks and payment providers seeking secure, low-cost cross-border transactions with stablecoins.While public blockchains offer security and transparency, enterprises in industries like finance and payments often face compliance challenges, particularly with know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. HashSphere addresses this by restricting access to verified participants, enabling firms to develop tokenized assets, AI-powered services and other blockchain-based products while meeting regulatory standards. The network also integrates Hedera’s existing tools, including the Token Service for managing digital assets and the Consensus Service for recording transactions with trusted timestamps. The platform is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing developers to deploy decentralized applications using Solidity and other EVM languages. — Kris Sandor Read more.

ASICS TO BE MORE LIKE SERVERS: In the beginning, there were only CPUs, then GPUs, for bitcoin mining. Then came the mighty ASIC in 2013, and with it, the “shoebox” form factor that has become emblematic of the bitcoin mining industry. What comes next? ASIC manufacturers are increasingly betting on a hydro-cooled server rack design to become a substantial portion of bitcoin mining fleets, leaning into the “direct-to-chip” cooling for further efficiency gains. Last September, Bitmain announced its model U3S21EXPH developed in a partnership with Hut 8. Its U3 design means that one unit takes up three spaces in a traditional server rack. MicroBT soon followed with its M63 Hydro series, as did Bitdeer’s Sealminer A2 Hydro unit. Following suit, Auradine released its server rack model, the AH3880, this March. Its U2 design, which occupies two server slots, is a bit smaller, but it packs more hashrate per unit of space at 600 TH/s (or 300 TH/s per slot) versus Bitmain’s 860 TH/s (286.66 TH/s per slot). The benefit of a server rack ASIC lies in standardization. Bitcoin miners are increasingly marching in step with the traditional datacenter industry, and that industry could see 40% adoption of direct liquid-to-chip cooling by 2026, according to data center developer Cyrus One. If miners adopt this design, then theoretically, they can optimize their supply chains by converging on server designs that are becoming best practice in the big-boy data center sector. — Colin Harper, Blockspace Read more.

GENSYN CEO BEN FIELDING: Ten years ago, when he was still a young AI researcher beginning his PhD track, Ben Fielding explored how “swarms” of AI — clusters of many different models — could talk to each other and learn from each other, which might improve the collective whole. There was just one problem: He was handcuffed by the realities of that noisy machine beneath his desk. And he knew he was outgunned by Google and other Big Tech. Compute constraints would always be an issue, he realized. The solution? Decentralized AI. Fielding co-founded Gensyn (along with Harry Grieve) in 2020, or years before Decentralized AI became fashionable. The project was initially known for building decentralized compute, but the vision is actually something wider: “The network for machine intelligence.” They’re building solutions up and down the tech stack. And now, a decade after Fielding’s noisy desk annoyed his lab-mates, the early tools of Gensyn are out in the wild. Gensyn recently released its “RL Swarms” protocol (a descendant of Fielding’s PhD work) and just launched its Testnet — which brings blockchain into the fold. Fielding talked with Jeff Wilser about AI Swarms, how blockchain snaps into the puzzle, and shares why all innovators — not just tech giants — “should have the right to build machine learning technologies.” — Jeff Wilser Read more.

In Other News

Web3 lacks a dedicated memory layer, making its current architecture inefficient and difficult to scale. Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) offers a solution by enhancing data propagation and storage efficiency in decentralized systems. Implementing RLNC can address Web3’s scalability challenges by optimizing memory and data access without compromising decentralization, says Muriel Médard, co-founder of Optimum. Read her op-ed here.

Ripple, an enterprise-focused blockchain service closely tied to the XRP Ledger (XRP), said on Wednesday it has integrated its stablecoin to the company’s cross-border payments system to boost adoption for Ripple USD (RLUSD). Select Ripple Payments customers including cross-border payment providers BKK Forex and iSend are already using the stablecoin to improve their treasury operations, the company said. Ripple plans to further expand the token’s availability of its token to payments customers. RLUSD reached a $244 million market capitalization, growing 87% over the past month. — Kris Sandor reports.

Regulatory and Policy

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or paused over a dozen ongoing cases (and lost one) since U.S. President Donald Trump retook office just over two months ago and appointed Commissioner Mark Uyeda as acting chair. Here is a rundown of what’s left on the SEC’s enforcement docket. — Nik De reports.

Calendar

April 8-10: Paris Blockchain Week

April 30-May 1: Token 2049, Dubai

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto

May 20-22: Avalanche Summit, London

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas

June 30-July 3: EthCC, Cannes

Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore