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CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Stablecoins stole the show at Bitcoin 2025 — here's what the major players said
LAS VEGAS — At the world's largest bitcoin conference this week on the Vegas Strip, the most consequential story wasn't about bitcoin. Stablecoins, the dollar-pegged digital tokens now driving a full-scale financial and political shift in Washington, stole the show. The momentum behind stablecoin legislation and crypto market reform is accelerating — and it's attracting a new kind of donor, investor, and voter. That shift took center stage at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas. Vice President JD Vance became the first sitting U.S. vice president to address the bitcoin community on Wednesday, delivering a full-throated endorsement of crypto. "I think it's wrong, actually, to call this just a conference," Vance told a crowd of 35,000. "This is a movement. And I'm proud to stand with you." "In this administration, we do not think that stablecoins threaten the integrity of the U.S. dollar. Quite the opposite," said Vance. "We view them as a force multiplier of our economic might." Stablecoins are designed to have a stable value against a non-crypto asset, usually the U.S. dollar. "We're streamlining payment rails for ensuring U.S. dollar global dominance for decades to come," Bo Hines, a White House official heading up the president's Digital Assets Council, told CNBC on the sidelines of Bitcoin 2025. He added that stablecoin integration into the U.S. financial system could unlock trillions of dollars in global demand for American debt. Those ambitions hinge on the passage of the GENIUS Act, a Senate bill that would establish the first comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told the Bitcoin 2025 crowd that the bill would move to a cloture vote on Monday after weeks of negotiations with Democrats. "We think we have a final deal," Lummis said. "If we can get this passed, this will be the first piece of digital asset legislation to pass the U.S. Senate." On the House side, Republicans are racing to match that pace. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., praised Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., for pushing a "calcified" Senate to act at record speed and said the House is determined to get both the stablecoin and broader market structure bills on President Donald Trump's desk before the August recess. "The president promised this," Emmer said. "We want it done now." Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc., who chairs the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, is leading efforts to advance companion legislation and expects the bill to reach the Financial Services Committee by July. "Stablecoin issuers will be purchasing U.S. Treasuries at a period of time where that is incredibly essential," Steil told CNBC in Vegas. "It enshrines the U.S. dollar in our dominant role as the world's reserve currency." Tether — the largest stablecoin issuer in the world — now ranks among the top buyers of U.S. Treasuries globally. Steil dismissed Democratic efforts to propose an amendment banning government officials from profiting off stablecoin ventures. The Trump family has ties to World Liberty Financial and its newly-launched stablecoin USD1. Kraken CEO Dave Ripley, who has been advising lawmakers behind the scenes, called the legislation essential to bringing financial institutions — including consumer brokers and major banks — into the digital asset ecosystem. But he cautioned that key provisions, including whether yield on stablecoins can be shared with users and how government officials may participate in the market, are still being debated. "Crypto is all about individuals," he said. "Let's bring the value to them." Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said commodity trading firms will be "the biggest driver" of stablecoin adoption in the next five years. He is already preparing for the next wave of competition as mainstream financial players begin launching their own digital dollars on the blockchain. Ardoino, whose company controls more than 60% of the stablecoin market, emphasized that traditional financial firms entering the stablecoin space will be constrained by their reliance on high-fee customers. "All the traditional financial firms will create stablecoins that will be offered to their existing customers," he told CNBC. According to The Wall Street Journal, major banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are in early talks to issue a unified digital dollar to compete with Tether. Tether, by contrast, is targeting the global majority excluded from banking. "Many of our competitors say, 'Oh, Tether is serving this niche of the unbanked,'" he said. "Half of the population of the world should not be called a niche." That global reach is one reason policymakers in Washington are moving fast. Under Trump's newly appointed regulatory team, momentum has shifted decisively. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been long viewed as the industry's top adversary, has begun dismantling its enforcement-first framework, clearing the way for greater institutional participation in crypto. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the change was long overdue. "For many years now, I've been complaining about the fact that the commission has not taken proactive steps to provide clarity, and now finally, we're at a place where we can do that," she said. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who has been meeting privately with the SEC, says tokenization — not just of dollars, but of public and private markets — is now within reach, even without new legislation. "We've actually been engaging with the SEC crypto task force as well as the administration," he told CNBC. "And it's our belief, actually, that we don't even need congressional action to make tokenization real. The SEC can just do it."
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Dems brace for Trump's assault on ActBlue: ‘We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure'
Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue. Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as 'unlawful 'straw donor' and foreign contributions to American elections' in a presidential memorandum on Thursday. 'President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,' a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. 'ActBlue has become notorious for its lax standards that enable unverified and fraudulent donations.' Democrats had been preparing for presidential action targeting the platform in recent days, alarmed by the GOP's growing focus on the platform where they conduct almost all of their fundraising. 'By targeting ActBlue, Trump is taking direct aim at the infrastructure of Democrats to run campaigns from school board to Congress,' said Kelly Dietrich, the CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, an organization that prepares Democrats to run for office. ActBlue raised $400 million in the first three months of 2025 alone, the biggest fundraising total in the first quarter of a non-presidential or midterm election year ever, the organization said. The platform, which processes individual contributions and funnels them to campaigns, dominates the landscape of Democratic fundraising operations. 'There are alternatives, yes, but there's no platform that has the integration and the reach of ActBlue that you could replace tomorrow,' said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant. 'This isn't a platform options problem, this is a penetration of market and depth-of-use problem ... Democrats should protest, fight [Trump's actions] in court, keep using ActBlue.' This is not the first time that the right has attacked ActBlue. Trump's presidential memorandum follows a letter that Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Committee on Administration, sent to ActBlue in October. Steil asked for documents and information about how the platform verifies donors, suggesting it does not have adequate protections to prevent foreign donations. In December, Steil announced the documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to 'automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined.' At the time, Steil called it a 'positive step forward' but said there 'is still more work to be done.' Democrats see Trump's latest memo as a continuation of that line of attack — even if doesn't ultimately disrupt the platform's operations. Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital consultant, described the memo as a simple messaging tool, not directly imperiling ActBlue's ability to function. 'To me it looks like the continuance of peddling this lie that Democratic small-dollar fundraising is actually coming from foreign nationals, which it obviously is not,' he said. Jeff Yao, a Democratic strategist and fundraiser, told POLITICO, 'This is the latest in a line of attacks from the far right that tries to basically use lies to affect people's confidence in ActBlue.' But there remains concern in Democratic circles that Trump's memo is only the beginning of a broader assault on the platform. Among some Democrats, that fear is centered in large part around the idea that the administration could move to freeze ActBlue accounts, even temporarily. 'Everything from payroll to health insurance could be affected by a bank freeze [of ActBlue accounts], which is certainly a looming concern — everyone will get the money out eventually, but if you lose a week or even three or four days to a freeze, that would really affect how campaigns function,' said Dietrich. Nothing in the White House fact sheet detailing Trump's memo suggests that a bank freeze is currently in the works. It does, though, accuse ActBlue of being a party to fraud, stating, 'Specifically, the Memorandum notes that a congressional investigation revealed significant fraud schemes using ActBlue and, over a 30-day period during the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.' While the Trump administration maintains the investigation is about election integrity, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital consultant, said Trump's actions concerning ActBlue are just the opposite. 'We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure — the tools that make it easier for everyday Americans to have a say in our democracy,' he said. 'That's not how this works. Trump is not going to be able to rig the midterm elections in his favor. We're not going to allow it.'
Politico
24-04-2025
- Business
- Politico
Dems brace for Trump's assault on ActBlue: ‘We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure'
Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue. Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as 'unlawful 'straw donor' and foreign contributions to American elections' in a presidential memorandum on Thursday. 'President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,' a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. 'ActBlue has become notorious for its lax standards that enable unverified and fraudulent donations.' Democrats had been preparing for presidential action targeting the platform in recent days, alarmed by the GOP's growing focus on the platform where they conduct almost all of their fundraising. 'By targeting ActBlue, Trump is taking direct aim at the infrastructure of Democrats to run campaigns from school board to Congress,' said Kelly Dietrich, the CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, an organization that prepares Democrats to run for office. ActBlue raised $400 million in the first three months of 2025 alone, the biggest fundraising total in the first quarter of a non-presidential or midterm election year ever, the organization said. The platform, which processes individual contributions and funnels them to campaigns, dominates the landscape of Democratic fundraising operations. 'There are alternatives, yes, but there's no platform that has the integration and the reach of ActBlue that you could replace tomorrow,' said Tim Lim, a Democratic digital consultant. 'This isn't a platform options problem, this is a penetration of market and depth-of-use problem ... Democrats should protest, fight [Trump's actions] in court, keep using ActBlue.' This is not the first time that the right has attacked ActBlue. Trump's presidential memorandum follows a letter that Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Committee on Administration, sent to ActBlue in October . Steil asked for documents and information about how the platform verifies donors, suggesting it does not have adequate protections to prevent foreign donations. In December, Steil announced the documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to 'automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined.' At the time, Steil called it a 'positive step forward' but said there 'is still more work to be done.' Democrats see Trump's latest memo as a continuation of that line of attack — even if doesn't ultimately disrupt the platform's operations. Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital consultant, described the memo as a simple messaging tool, not directly imperiling ActBlue's ability to function. 'To me it looks like the continuance of peddling this lie that Democratic small-dollar fundraising is actually coming from foreign nationals, which it obviously is not,' he said. Jeff Yao, a Democratic strategist and fundraiser, told POLITICO, 'This is the latest in a line of attacks from the far right that tries to basically use lies to affect people's confidence in ActBlue.' But there remains concern in Democratic circles that Trump's memo is only the beginning of a broader assault on the platform. Among some Democrats, that fear is centered in large part around the idea that the administration could move to freeze ActBlue accounts, even temporarily. 'Everything from payroll to health insurance could be affected by a bank freeze [of ActBlue accounts], which is certainly a looming concern — everyone will get the money out eventually, but if you lose a week or even three or four days to a freeze, that would really affect how campaigns function,' said Dietrich. Nothing in the White House fact sheet detailing Trump's memo suggests that a bank freeze is currently in the works. It does, though, accuse ActBlue of being a party to fraud, stating, 'Specifically, the Memorandum notes that a congressional investigation revealed significant fraud schemes using ActBlue and, over a 30-day period during the 2024 election cycle, hundreds of ActBlue donations from foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards, despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to U.S. elections.' While the Trump administration maintains the investigation is about election integrity, Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital consultant, said Trump's actions concerning ActBlue are just the opposite. 'We're not going to let Donald Trump attack our core infrastructure — the tools that make it easier for everyday Americans to have a say in our democracy,' he said. 'That's not how this works. Trump is not going to be able to rig the midterm elections in his favor. We're not going to allow it.'
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump to target ActBlue in presidential memorandum
In a shot at ActBlue, the left's major online donation platform, President Donald Trump plans to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, according to a person familiar with the policy and granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-public details. Attorney General Pam Bondi's office is expected to be involved in the crackdown, the person said, though further details about the mechanism she will use were not immediately available. The order is expected to specifically target ActBlue, which Republicans have long claimed could be exploited by foreign actors. Democrats had been bracing in recent days for potential action from the White House against the platform, casting it as an unwarranted attack on their fundraising efforts. In an email to Democrats on Wednesday referring to a potential coming action from the White House targeting the platform, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones wrote, 'Nothing will deter or interrupt ActBlue's mission and work to enable millions of Americans to participate in our democracy. There is an ongoing and persistent effort to weaken the confidence of the American people in what's possible. This is the next version of 'the big lie.'' On Thursday, ActBlue told POLITICO, 'ActBlue plays a vital role in enabling all Americans to participate in our democracy and the organization strictly abides by all federal and state laws governing its activities. We will always stand steadfast in defending the rights of all Americans to participate in our democracy and ActBlue will continue its mission undeterred and uninterrupted, providing a safe, secure fundraising platform for the millions of grassroots donors who rely on us.' Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Committee on Administration, sent a letter to ActBlue in October asking for documents and information about how the platform verifies donors, suggesting that it does not have adequate protections to prevent foreign donations. Federal law prohibits any contributions, donations, expenditures or disbursements either directly or indirectly from foreign nationals and governments in any U.S. election, whether federal, state or local. In December, Steil announced the documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to 'automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined.' At the time, Steil called it a 'positive step forward' but said there 'is still more work to be done.' In a December press release concerning the issue, ActBlue said that its 'robust security program and strict fraud prevention measures help us rigorously protect donors' information, root out potentially unlawful foreign contributions, protect donors from financial fraud, and flag potentially unlawful or fraudulent activity.'
Politico
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Trump to target ActBlue in presidential memorandum
In a shot at ActBlue, the left's major online donation platform, President Donald Trump plans to sign a presidential memorandum on Thursday cracking down on foreign contributions in American elections, according to a person familiar with the policy and granted anonymity to discuss not-yet-public details. Attorney General Pam Bondi's office is expected to be involved in the crackdown, the person said, though further details about the mechanism she will use were not immediately available. The order is expected to specifically target ActBlue, which Republicans have long claimed could be exploited by foreign actors. Democrats had been bracing in recent days for potential action from the White House against the platform, casting it as an unwarranted attack on their fundraising efforts. In an email to Democrats on Wednesday referring to a potential coming action from the White House targeting the platform, ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones wrote, 'Nothing will deter or interrupt ActBlue's mission and work to enable millions of Americans to participate in our democracy. There is an ongoing and persistent effort to weaken the confidence of the American people in what's possible. This is the next version of 'the big lie.'' On Thursday, ActBlue told POLITICO, 'ActBlue plays a vital role in enabling all Americans to participate in our democracy and the organization strictly abides by all federal and state laws governing its activities. We will always stand steadfast in defending the rights of all Americans to participate in our democracy and ActBlue will continue its mission undeterred and uninterrupted, providing a safe, secure fundraising platform for the millions of grassroots donors who rely on us.' Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), chair of the House Committee on Administration, sent a letter to ActBlue in October asking for documents and information about how the platform verifies donors, suggesting that it does not have adequate protections to prevent foreign donations. Federal law prohibits any contributions, donations, expenditures or disbursements either directly or indirectly from foreign nationals and governments in any U.S. election, whether federal, state or local. In December, Steil announced the documents turned over by ActBlue showed that the company had implemented new policies to 'automatically reject donations that use foreign prepaid/gift cards, domestic gift cards, are from high-risk/sanctioned countries, and have the highest level of risk as determined.' At the time, Steil called it a 'positive step forward' but said there 'is still more work to be done.' In a December press release concerning the issue, ActBlue said that its 'robust security program and strict fraud prevention measures help us rigorously protect donors' information, root out potentially unlawful foreign contributions, protect donors from financial fraud, and flag potentially unlawful or fraudulent activity.'
