The legislation to set rules for stablecoin issuers is the first major digital assets bill to ever clear the Senate and now moves on to the U.S. House.
Jun 17, 2025, 9: 47 p.m.
The overwhelming bipartisan passage of the U.S. Senate’s stablecoin bill, with a 68-30 final vote that saw a huge surge of Democrats joining their Republican counterparts on Tuesday, sets a new high-water mark of crypto policy efforts in the U.S. as the legislation now heads to the House of Representatives.
The major Democratic backing for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 (GENIUS) Act helps give it momentum as it lands in the other chamber, where House lawmakers can either vote on it as written or pursue changes that will require a final round in the Senate before it can head to President Donald Trump’s desk.
As written, the bill would set up guardrails around the approval and supervision of U.S. issuers of stablecoins, the dollar-based tokens such as the ones backed by Circle, Ripple and Tether. Firms making these digital assets available to U.S. users would have to meet stringent reserve demands, transparency requirements, money-laundering compliance and regulatory supervision that’s also likely to include new capital rules.
Ji Kim, the Acting CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, called it a “historic step forward for the digital asset industry,” in a prepared statement shared ahead of the vote
“This is a win for the U.S., a win for innovation and a monumental step towards appropriate regulation for digital assets in the United States,” said Amanda Tuminelli, executive director and chief legal officer of the DeFi Education Fund, in a similar statement.
While it has failed to convince some of the most vocal Democratic critics such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who say it allows loopholes for foreign tokens such as Tether’s
, doesn’t deal with conflicts presented by the personal crypto involvement of President Trump and clears a path for technology giants such as Amazon to issue their own coins, the bill’s backers in her party have essentially argued that doing nothing isn’t an option.
“With this bill, the United States is one step closer to becoming the global leader in crypto,” said Senator Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee Republican who sponsored the bill, as the Senate prepared to vote on Tuesday. “The value of stablecoins will be pegged to th