Latest news with #Bitcoin2025
CNBC
4 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
Watch CNBC's full interview with Strategy's Michael Saylor from Bitcoin 2025
Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy, joins CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos at Bitcoin 2025 to discuss the rise of corporate bitcoin purchases, digital asset regulation and more.
CNBC
5 hours 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."
CNBC
5 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
$TRUMP and other meme coins won't be protected by SEC, Commissioner Hester Peirce says
LAS VEGAS — Now that the SEC is out of the business of regulating meme coins, investors shouldn't expect any guidance on $TRUMP, according to Hester Peirce, one of the agency's veteran commissioners. The SEC said in February that it does not deem most meme coins securities under U.S. federal law. That took the crypto tokens out of its purview just weeks after President Donald Trump launched his own meme coin and saw it immediately soar in value, lifting his paper net worth by billions of dollars. Peirce told CNBC that it's a similar situation to when nonfungible tokens (NFTs) gained popularity in 2021. They weren't securities but they did rise and fall in value based on investor activity in the market. Peirce said the SEC missed an opportunity to announce publicly that the agency wasn't getting involved. "Here was something where I saw a lot of interest in this out in the world — in meme coins — and it made sense for us to say, 'People, if you are expecting that there's SEC protection around these, you should not expect that,'" Peirce said in an interview at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas. "You can package almost anything into a securities transaction. But generally, it's good for people to know, I should not be looking to the SEC for protection in this area." In other words, buy at your own risk. Since President Trump took office in January, the SEC has been rolling back its enforcement in crypto, taking a more industry-friendly approach to the asset class. It's a controversial strategy, as the president and his family deepen their involvement in crypto, profiting in a way that's led many Democratic lawmakers to declare a clear conflict of interest. The $TRUMP token, 80% of which is controlled by the Trump Organization and affiliated entities, has become the centerpiece of Trump's expanding crypto empire. Like most meme coins, the token has no underlying value. But after debuting in January, just ahead of the inauguration, $TRUMP soared to a $15 billion market cap, fueled by President Trump's social media posts declaring, "It's time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!" Within days, the token lost most of its value. Still, the project creators get a fee for every trade. The White House previously told CNBC that Trump's assets are held in a trust managed by his children, and there are "no conflicts of interest." But Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, is among a growing list of Democratic lawmakers warning that the Trump family's crypto holdings may serve as a backdoor for foreign and corporate interests seeking access to the president. Meanwhile, crypto billionaires once targeted by regulators like the SEC are regaining political and financial influence. On Thursday, the SEC dropped its long-running lawsuit against Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao, bringing to an end one of the most aggressive crypto enforcement actions brought by former SEC Chair Gary Gensler. The agency had accused Binance of misleading investors, commingling customer funds, and allowing wealthy U.S. users to evade restrictions. After pleading guilty to federal money-laundering violations in November 2023, Zhao served just four months in prison and emerged with most of his crypto empire intact. Forbes now estimates his net worth at over $67 billion. Leading up to the dismissal, Zhao had deepened ties to Trump-affiliated networks. As Binance prepared to list USD1, a new stablecoin that funnels profits to Trump-aligned entities, Zhao disclosed that he had applied for a presidential pardon from Trump's Justice Department. Weeks later, Binance received a $2 billion capital injection into USD1 from an Emirati state fund. Peirce rejected the idea the SEC's actions are politically motivated. "We didn't have a clear set of rules," Peirce said, regarding the Binance case. "There were a lot of questions about how this particular activity in the crypto space intersected with our existing securities laws. So we're trying to take a step back, use our regulatory tools to write those rules, and then enforce those rules." That same philosophy guided the SEC's January decision to rescind Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, a controversial directive that had effectively blocked traditional financial institutions from offering crypto custody. "It wasn't even a rule," Peirce said. "It didn't go through the normal process. it was just a pronouncement." She said the policy had the effect of excluding banks and other experienced custodians from participating in the crypto space. "It said that lots of traditional entities that would have done custody for crypto, practically speaking, could not participate," she said.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Square Sets the Table for Crypto-Fueled Caffeine Fixes
Girl/boy math is telling yourself that an $8 matcha latte costs just seven hundred-thousandths of a bitcoin. Soon, that conversion will matter because any shop that uses Square will be able to accept bitcoin payments. Square parent Block said it'll start supporting bitcoin later this year, reaching all 4 million of its sellers by next year. CEO Jack Dorsey said merchants can keep the bitcoin they're paid in or have it automatically converted to fiat currencies (like the dollar, peso, or pound). Previously, sellers could only do the opposite, meaning convert their fiat sales into bitcoin. READ ALSO: E.l.f. Soars After $1 Billion Pow(d)er Move to buy Hailey Bieber's Rhode and Omada Health Preps to Go Public as IPO Market Revives Square rival Stripe started supporting stablecoin transactions last year, acquiring stablecoin platform Bridge in February for $1.1 billion to strengthen its infrastructure. It's actually a circle-back for Stripe, which was the first payments company to process bitcoin in 2014 but discontinued its crypto offering four years later after running into low demand and high fees. PayPal, meanwhile, has been letting shoppers check out with crypto since 2021. PayPal launched its own stablecoin in 2023 and began allowing US businesses to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform last year. As payment platforms give millions of small businesses more exposure to bitcoin, big businesses are also piling into the digital asset — whose price popped 50% from last month to an all-time high of more than $111,000 last week: According to tracker, 114 publicly-listed companies now hold bitcoin, up from 89 at the beginning of last month. Together, they've amassed about $87 billion worth. GameStop disclosed yesterday that it bought $500 million worth of bitcoin to stash in its treasury. Similarly, POTUS Trump's media company said Tuesday it plans to raise $2.5 billion to build its own treasury of the in-demand digital asset. Hype Machine: Block announced its bitcoin expansion at Bitcoin 2025, an annual crypto conference where, last year, Trump said he'd make the US the 'crypto capital of the planet.' Hopes are high that crypto will enter the mainstream under Trump as regulators push for legal frameworks that could help it gain wider adoption (a stablecoin bill is imminent). At this year's Bitcoin 2025, VP JD Vance doubled down on the administration's support, saying the crypto industry needs regulatory clarity ASAP. This post first appeared on The Daily Upside. To receive delivering razor sharp analysis and perspective on all things finance, economics, and markets, subscribe to our free The Daily Upside newsletter.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Fastex Expands U.S. Presence With Los Angeles Office
Fastex, a Dubai-based crypto exchange, is expanding its presence in the U.S., building out an office in Los Angeles, California. According to a Thursday announcement, Fastex will offer spot crypto trading services of tokens including bitcoin BTC, ether ETH, Cardano ADA, Solana SOL and its native utility token, Fasttoken FTN, to both retail and institutional investors in the U.S. Fastex's American expansion comes as the U.S. continues to overhaul its approach to crypto regulation under President Donald Trump's administration. Since Trump took office in January, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has retreated from the so-called regulation-by-enforcement approach to crypto it took under former Chair Gary Gensler, dropping a host of open investigations and closing ongoing litigation against crypto exchanges. In an interview with CoinDesk at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, Fastex's Chief Legal Officer and board member Vardan Khachatryan said that the SEC's softened stance toward crypto regulation played a major role in the exchange's decision to expand in the U.S., though he acknowledged that there is still no concrete legal framework for crypto in the country. 'There has been enough of a policy change, at least in terms of [how the U.S. government is] viewing things, that allowed us to go for this,' Khachatryan said. 'It's still kind of a risk, but it's a lower risk.' With a host of crypto companies returning to the U.S. due to the Trump Administration's crypto-friendly policies, cities like New York are hoping to attract companies expanding to the U.S. to set up shop in their jurisdictions. But, while Khachatryan said New York would be 'the right place to be in terms of headquarters,' he said that, for now, the prospect of obtaining a BitLicense — the notoriously difficult-to-obtain crypto license issued by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) — is prohibitive. 'I hope that things will change a bit,' Khachatryan said. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has branded himself the 'Bitcoin Mayor' in an attempt to lure crypto companies to New York, called for the end to the BitLicense regime during a speech at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on is currently headquartered in Dubai, in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). Khachatryan said the exchange is currently working on obtaining a license from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). After expanding in the U.S., Khachatryan said the exchange also has its eyes on a Latin American expansion, starting with Brazil, followed by Argentina and Mexico. Inicia sesión para acceder a tu cartera de valores
