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Senate Stablecoin Bill Likely to Win Massive Bipartisan Support, Dem Lawmaker Says

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — As many as 16 Democrats may vote in favor of the Senate’s stablecoin bill when it gets to its final set of votes in the legislative body, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego said Thursday.

The «Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025» (GENIUS) Act faced headwinds last month after Gallego led a group of Democrats against voting for cloture, a procedural hurdle that would advance legislation, citing concerns about consumer protection and other provisions.

Within a week and a half, however, Gallego and other Democrats who had defected from the vote flipped, and the Arizona lawmaker told CoinDesk he predicted that his colleagues would continue advancing it out of the Senate.

«We’ve worked in a very honest, earnest manner with our Republican colleagues, [and] we think that they’ve been doing the same,» he said in an interview. «They adopted a lot of the amendments, most of the amendments that we’ve been adding.»

«It is a significantly different bill,» he said.

He said he led his colleagues in blocking the first cloture vote «because we didn’t think it was a good product,» and Democrats needed more time to sort out the issues they had with the legislation

Gallego later said at the Blockchain Association’s «Charting the Course: Crypto Clarity in America» summit that he’d spent “hours and hours on end” personally negotiating the language with other lawmakers, but the Republican team pulled a “power play” to push an unfinished version toward a vote on the Senate floor. “They tried to jam us,” he said.

So he led his colleagues in a brief effort to slow things down and ask for some changes, he said.

‘Good product’

“I really wanted to bring a good product to the floor,” Gallego said. And so far, his Republican counterparts “have been honoring everything we agreed to.”

If that continues, the bill should come to a final vote next week that gets major bipartisan approval, Gallego said, which he contends could show even more support than previous procedural votes.

Even if the bill meets with success, as he expects, it doesn’t work without also passing the legislation to set up regulations for the structure of the wider crypto markets.

He added that he hoped market structure legislation would be worked on in a bipartisan manner, noting that while the stablecoin bill is likely to advance through Congress, «there’s only so much time on the calendar» to work through other bills. The Senate will have to take up budget legislation at some point, in addition to whatever market structure bill it ultimately introduces.

“The House product has to be strong,” Gallego said, and that will direct what then happens in the Senate. “We don’t want to be starting from square one.”

‘Optimistic’ deadline

Gallego suggested that an August deadline is optimistic and added that as long as it’s done early next year, before March, it may not be tainted by next year’s congressional elections.

“We all become like animals during the election cycle,” he said of his colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Congressman French Hill, who runs the House Financial Services Committee, agreed with Gallego that finishing both bills is vital.

French Hill (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)

“I’m not going back to [former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair] Gary Gensler,” Hill said. “But if we don’t pass both bills, we are potentially at that whim at any moment,” to return to the interpretation of regulators operating without tailored laws.

Without the market structure legislation, traditional finance firms and the general public may not be as willing to delve into the digital assets sector, he said.

«Traditional finance people won’t partner, won’t custody, won’t act as a broker, won’t act as a dealer, won’t hire you to create an on-ramp or off-ramp. It won’t be interoperable. None of that will happen if you don’t have clarity, which is why we have to have both of these bills pass the Congress and be signed into law in this Congress,» he said.

Hill said that lawmakers from both parties and chambers still have a chance to move the bills by August, “if we cooperate with each other.”

Congress will try to move both bills to President Donald Trump’s desk by August, said Wisconsin Representative Bryan Steil. Dusty Johnson, who represents South Dakota, said that there may be some differences of opinion between the House and Senate on at least the market structure legislation.

«We can take GENIUS, but I don’t think they would necessarily take our Clarity Act lock, stock and barrel,» Johnson said at the event.

The bills from the House and Senate need to be identical before the President can sign them into law. Either one of the legislative bodies would have to sign off on the other body’s work, or the two bodies would have to negotiate out any differences.

Reps. Bryan Steil and Dustry Johnson (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

‘One strong, loud voice’

The House Financial Services Committee will hold a markup on the market structure bill next Tuesday.

“We have a lot of work we have to do,” said Gallego, noting that stretching the process into the start of next year still works.

“If we move too fast with a shitty product, then we’re going to have a shitty vote,” he said.

The crypto industry also needs to be more unified in how it approaches lawmakers, Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger said in her first public appearance in the role since leaving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Summer Mersinger (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk)

«We must speak with one strong, loud voice in Washington,» she said. «Speaking with one voice does not mean we all have to think the same way or we have to agree on every issue.»

However, the different groups and companies lobbying Washington should find common ground, she said.

Read more: Stablecoin Bills in House and Senate Still Need to Mesh on Several Points: French Hill

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Circle Valuation Is ‘Outside Our Comfort Zone,’ Initiate at Underweight: JPMorgan

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Wall Street heavyweight JPMorgan (JPM) initiated coverage of stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) with an underweight rating and an underwhelming $80 price target.

The shares were trading 4.5% higher at around $189 at publication time.

Circle is well positioned, the bank said, and its USDC stablecoin has an «early-mover advantage,» with growing use cases in payments.

«We think highly of the Circle management team and are confident in the outlook for outsized stablecoin and USDC growth,» analysts led by Kenneth Worthington wrote.

Still, the analysts see the company’s market capitalization as elevated, and initiated coverage with an underweight rating. The stock priced at $31 a share in its initial public offering (IPO), and hit a record high of $299 last Monday.

Other Wall Street analysts were not as bearish. Broker Bernstein initiated coverage with an outperform rating and a $230 price target, saying Circle was an «investor must-hold.»

«CRCL is building a market-leading digital dollar stablecoin network, with a strong regulatory edge, liquidity headstart and marquee distribution partnerships,» analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.

Bernstein is also bullish about the wider stablecoin market, and expects total market cap to reach around $4 trillion in the next decade from $225 billion today.

Rival broker Canaccord Genuity started coverage of Circle with a buy rating and a $247 price target.

The firm’s analysts view the issuer of USDC as «having many of the key attributes that could make it a long-term winner in this potentially very large and new market for truly digital money.»

Read more: Circle Mania Grips South Korea as Retail Investors Pile Into Stablecoin Play

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Popular Financial Advisor Ric Edelman Says Investors Should Allocate Up to 40% of Wealth to Crypto

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Prominent financial advisor Ric Edelman says investors should consider putting as much as 40% of their wealth into cryptocurrency, a bold recommendation that reflects how far digital assets have come in recent years.

“Today I am saying 40%, that’s astonishing,” Edelman told CNBC’s Crypto World on Friday. “No one has ever said such a thing.”

Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, has been active in crypto for over a decade. He first urged investors to allocate part of their portfolios to bitcoin BTC in 2018. In his 2021 book “The Truth About Crypto,” he described even a 1% crypto allocation as “reasonable” for most people.

Now, Edelman believes the case for crypto exposure is far stronger, pointing to what he called a “massive change” in the industry over the past four years. In particular, he highlighted growing political support for digital assets, especially following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Today, all those questions have been resolved,” Edelman said, referring to regulatory uncertainty and institutional hesitation. “It’s radically changed and is now a mainstream asset.”

Edelman’s firm, Edelman Financial Engines, manages nearly $300 billion in assets. Though traditionally known for retirement planning and wealth management, the firm’s growing attention to digital assets mirrors a broader trend among financial institutions embracing crypto as a legitimate asset class.

Even though Edelman described crypto as the “best investment opportunity of the decade,” he acknowledged that a 40% allocation may not suit everyone, suggesting a more conservative 10% for those with lower risk tolerance.

Edelman’s recommendation marks one of the most aggressive calls from a mainstream financial figure to date. Most financial advisors in the U.S. are currently recommending well under 5% to their clients.

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.

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BitMine Immersion Stock Triples as It Raises $250M for Ether Treasury, Adds Thomas Lee to Board

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BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has secured $250 million via a private placement of common stock and will use the funds to launch an ether (ETH) treasury.

When the deal closes, expected July 3, the Las Vegas-based miner said it will rank among the largest publicly traded holders of ETH.

The financing, priced at $4.50 a share, brought together investors including Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Kraken, Galaxy Digital and Republic. Cantor Fitzgerald advised lead investor MOZAYYX, while ThinkEquity placed the deal.

BitMine justified its choice of ether as a primary reserve asset saying Ethereum currently leads in stablecoin payments, tokenized assets, and decentralized financial applications.

“By having a direcT ETH treasury position, the company has access to native protocol-level activities, such as staking and decentralized finance mechanisms, on the Ethereum network,” the company wrote.

The move also reshapes BitMine’s leadership. Fundstrat founder Thomas Lee, long known on Wall Street for his crypto research and bullishness, was newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Lee said the round reflects “the rapid and continued convergence of traditional financial services and crypto” and set a new key performance metric for the company: ether per share.

SharpLink Gaming (SBET) is one of the few other publicly traded companies creating and ether treasury, having recently boosted it to 188,478 ETH. Most other companies creating crypto treasuries focus on bitcoin (BTC).

BitMine’s shares have more than tripled in premarket action to nearly $14.

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