Democrats Capitulate, Senate is About to Pass the GENIUS Act, a Sweeping Cryptocurrency Law

Amid a flood of industry lobbying in Washington, DC, and Democrats’ capitulation, the Senate is setting to pass the GENIUS Act, a sweeping cryptocurrency law that could spread fraud-ridden

Amid a flood of industry lobbying in Washington, DC, and Democrats’ capitulation, the Senate is set to pass the GENIUS Act, a sweeping cryptocurrency law that could spread fraud-ridden, destabilizing digital currencies across the banking system. But lawmakers and consumer protection experts warn that the bill has an even more serious problem: it would allow Elon Musk and other Big Tech tycoons to issue their own private currencies.

That means we could soon live in a world where all online transactions will require us to pay for goods in billionaires' own made-up monopoly money, for which tech giants will be able to charge exorbitant transaction fees.

This scenario isn't just a pipe dream. It's a long-running project by tech platforms to control payment networks. In the past few weeks, Meta began laying the groundwork once again to launch its own cryptocurrency.

What's more, thanks to a bipartisan "compromise" that convinced Democratic holdouts to support the legislation, the latest version of the bill could stop the government's top financial and tech regulator from overseeing any of these potential tech currencies.

The GENIUS Act, which stands for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, was designed to create light-touch regulations for stablecoins, a more commonly used form of crypto token that is often pegged to the US dollar in an equivalent value (one stablecoin is redeemable to one dollar).

If it becomes law, any banking or even nonbanking enterprise could get a license to deal stablecoins with minimal oversight. This could riddle the entire financial system with volatility and make illicit activity like fraud and terrorism undetectable while providing major new markets to the companies issuing the cryptocurrencies. The El Salvador–based firm Tether is currently the largest trading platform for these currencies and has faced numerous US lawsuits for fraud.

After some crypto-friendly Democrats temporarily backed away from their support for the bill earlier this month, Republicans came to the bargaining table and made what appeared to be some modest concessions to temper Democrats' concerns about Trump's corrupt use of crypto for personal gain. But a legal analysis from the Democratic staff on the Banking Committee just blasted this new version of the bill for allowing Big Tech to create its own currencies, among a litany of other problems.

The bill also includes a giant carve-out to ensure Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, would not be covered by even modest restrictions, thereby "gifting the President’s closest Big Tech ally a competitive advantage in creating his own private currency," according to the Banking Committee analysis.

Musk might not be the only one scoring these benefits. The Trump administration could also waive the bill's more stringent requirements for any favored tech company, according to the Senate Banking Committee staff.

On top of these carve-outs, a new legal citation slipped into the bill tacitly strips away the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a key financial and tech regulator, to oversee the issuance of stablecoins. The CFPB has been probing Meta and other tech companies' payment networks and has taken action to regulate those platforms like banks.

Despite these concerns, sixteen Democratic senators just voted in favor of moving the updated bill to a floor vote, which all but guarantees its passage through the Senate. Just two Republicans, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), voted against the measure, disfavoring federal intervention to assist crypto and Big Tech.

According to Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, their colleagues have now given license to the kind of blatant pay to play that Democrats had claimed to oppose in the original version of the GENIUS Act.

The tech giants that stand to benefit from the bill funneled millions of dollars to key swing-seat candidates this past election. Those include vocal crypto allies Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who each received $10 million from political action committees funded by cryptocurrency interests. The Protect Progress PAC, the Democratic arm of the crypto lobby's campaign spending operation, spent $33 million on both primary and general election races in 2024.