This article was compiled and organized by BlockWeeks
Washington's "Crypto Week" Delivers Landmark Bills
The U.S. House of Representatives passed three key crypto bills in one go on Thursday. House leadership named this week "Crypto Week" and promised to push major legislation through.
The three bills are: the GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation, passed by a vote of 308 to 122 (the bill had already passed the Senate on June 17 by a vote of 68 to 30); the CLARITY Act crypto market structure bill, passed by a vote of 294 to 134, which has not yet been introduced in the Senate and faces a difficult path; and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act, passed by a vote of 218 to 210.
However, most of the week was consumed by scrambling to deal with an impromptu "rebellion" by the House Freedom Caucus. This group of conservative lawmakers blocked the bills' advancement on Tuesday and Wednesday, reportedly led by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Andy Harris (R-Md.). Their argument was that the GENIUS Act must include strict provisions prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Although they ultimately voted to send the bill to the full House for a vote, they voted against the stablecoin bill in the final vote.
Rare Bipartisan Cooperation, CLARITY's Democratic Support Exceeds FIT21
The bipartisan support that GENIUS and CLARITY received was remarkable. Both received veto-proof majorities (though the president has not threatened a veto), and CLARITY received more Democratic votes than FIT21 did in the 118th Congress last year (CLARITY received 102 votes, while FIT21 in May 2024 received 71 votes). The rise in House minority support for Republican-led crypto legislation highlights the crypto industry's growing national adoption and political influence.
CLARITY is a landmark bill that will determine regulatory jurisdiction over different types of tokens (such as securities and commodities), set decentralization thresholds, and plan a path for mainstream financial adoption of digital assets. But the bill faces a difficult path in the Senate: it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans hold only 53 seats. Democrats are also pushing an amendment to prohibit the president's family from participating in various crypto-related businesses.
GENIUS Act Signed at the White House Today, Large Attendance
The GENIUS Act will be signed into law by President Trump at a signing ceremony at the White House today at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Key lawmakers from both the Senate and House will attend, including the bill's author, Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), and Senate co-sponsors; key House members including French Hill (R-Ark.) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.); as well as their staff, including Hagerty's former senior aide on the Senate Banking Committee, Luke Pettit—who played a key role in drafting the bill and has since been confirmed as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions, a senior position likely to involve implementation of some of the GENIUS Act's regulation and oversight.
Also attending the White House signing ceremony are Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks, Executive Director of the President's Digital Assets Working Group Bo Hines, Treasury Department Digital Assets Ministerial Advisor Tyler Williams, and numerous crypto industry supporters.
Essentially a "Dollar Hegemony Act," Not a Crypto Act
The signing of the GENIUS Act is a historic moment for the U.S. dollar. At its core, it should be viewed as a payments and dollar dominance bill, not a crypto bill. By establishing a comprehensive consumer protection and regulatory oversight framework for dollar-backed stablecoins and allowing U.S. fintech companies and traditional financial companies to issue them, GENIUS will open an important channel for global dollar circulation, thereby maintaining and expanding the dollar's global dominance.
While crypto issuers such as Circle and Tether will benefit (assuming Tether takes advantage of the bill's foreign issuer pathway), the entities actually newly permitted to issue dollar stablecoins are in fact U.S. banks. We expect banks of all sizes to consider issuing their own stablecoins, which will bring faster settlement, transparency, and the ability to self-custody digital dollars to millions of Americans and global citizens, and reshape the domestic and international payments landscape in disruptive and innovative ways.
Winners include fintech companies, banks, existing stablecoin issuers, merchants able to bypass expensive card swipe fees, and consumers who will enjoy faster and cheaper payments. Likely losers include credit card issuers, small banks lacking the technical capability to launch their own stablecoins, and governments trying to impose capital controls—whose citizens will find it easier to obtain dollars. The biggest winner should be the dollar itself: it gains both more convenient payment circulation and growing demand for U.S. debt.
Bitcoin and other crypto assets may also benefit from the broader adoption of stablecoins brought about by GENIUS. The further integration of stablecoins into traditional payment and financial systems could bring positive sentiment to native digital assets.
WLFI: Valuation Comparable to HyperLiquid, Yet Lacking Economic Rights
Another focus this week is the Trump family's World Liberty Financial (WLFI). The team has initiated on-chain transactions to enable trading functionality. Whether it can seize the accumulated community momentum and its "privileged position" close to the Trump administration depends on the World Liberty team itself (its stablecoin code was not written by the team).
Once the World Liberty team opens WLFI trading, we will see real price discovery beyond the thin pre-market, such as the pre-market on whales.market. That pre-market has seen about $15 million in volume since launch, and as of writing WLFI is quoted at about $0.16, a premium of 10x and 3x over the team's previous two sale prices of $0.015 and $0.05, respectively. At the current price, WLFI would become the 11th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, just behind HyperLiquid's HYPE.
HYPE and WLFI form a sharp contrast. The former's economic model is tied to the most popular perpetual contract decentralized exchange, with $1.5 trillion in volume and $300 million in revenue over the past 12 months. WLFI's governance token, by contrast, has no economic rights to a DeFi protocol that has not yet launched.
Should an Aave derivative with no economic rights be worth 3x Aave itself—especially when Aave can also take 20% of WLFI's lending revenue? Or will it be like another $TRUMP meme coin? Time will tell.
U.S. Banks Permitted to Custody Crypto Assets
On Monday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) jointly issued updated guidance for banking institutions regarding their provision of crypto asset custody services on behalf of customers.
The release coincided with Congress's "Crypto Week," as lawmakers vote on bills such as GENIUS and CLARITY to further regulate digital asset rules.
The guidance outlines risk management expectations and supervisory considerations for banks seeking to custody crypto assets, reaffirms that banking law applies to such services, and covers key areas such as asset-specific risk assessment.
