In the minutes after President Donald Trump signed a bill that joins the crypto world's stablecoins to the U.S. financial system, two of the chief stablecoin architects made the case in the Washington summer heat outside the White House that their companies are ready to embrace the new law.
Before he'd signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law after it swept through both chambers of Congress with major bipartisan votes, Trump basked in cheers and thanked several industry leaders in the East Room audience, including Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Outside, the executives talked about next steps.
Ardoino amplified his plans for moving some of his global business into the U.S., where he said the focus will be on institutional users for a new token, but he added that he also intends to have Tether's stablecoin powerhouse USDT comply with the GENIUS Act as a foreign issuer. That'll mean a new auditing regime and changes to the vast reserves the company already maintains, which he says will require "an adjustment" but noted — with a smile — that his company "made
$13 billion in profits
" last year and will be able to manage it.
"Tether will comply with the GENIUS Act," he said, adding that the company will get to work now meeting the foreign-issuer standards. He said Tether has three years to work on getting into the U.S., and the company intends to manage two different versions of its stablecoins domestically — a jurisdiction it currently steers clear of.
The U.S.-centric coin — a second flavor of Tether that hasn't yet been hatched — is envisioned as serving a very different purpose.
"Institutions are used to super efficient markets, and they will count the single basis point; and so, for that reason, we need to build something that is proper for this new market," he told CoinDesk in the interview. The product built for those institutions will "focus on payments and high, high, high efficiency."
For Circle — a public company based in the U.S. — CEO Allaire said that the GENIUS Act "really enshrines into law Circle's way of doing business."
"We have always been trusted, transparent; we've been publicly audited for five years," he said.
But he noted that the U.S. landscape for stablecoins has already been rapidly changing in anticipation of the new law, with "major technology companies, major commerce firms, financial institutions" lining up to participate, which he said he welcomes.
"Once you have that federal law, it really is a green light to all these types of institutions to know that they can depend on this technology, build on this technology, integrated into how they store and move money into other innovations that can be done with smart contracts and programabilities," Allaire said.
To do business in the U.S., the GENIUS Act demands that extremely limited, highly liquid assets — mostly U.S. Treasuries — will back issuers' coins dollar-for-dollar, and it requires a stringent auditing process to constantly ensure that the assets are there.
Tether's Ardoino said his company's
new chief financial officer
, Simon McWilliams, "started to work" to land a "Big Four" audit firm — one of the global leaders in financial auditing — which has only been a possibility because of the recent support from the Trump administration. His company has a
special relationship with the administration
, too, in which the former CEO of Tether's chief U.S. reserves manager, Cantor Fitzgerald, is Trump's secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick.
Ardoino's appearance at the White House and direct thanks from the president is a sharp reversal of Tether's U.S. history, in which it settled investigations with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and New York Department of Financial Services. But past reports that the company remained under further U.S. investigation never developed into actions against the company or its officers.
Trump boasted repeatedly on Friday that he dug the crypto industry out of legal trouble with his predecessor's administration.
A company that's developed into a lobbying and political giant in Washington in a short period, Coinbase, was represented in Trump's front row at the White House event, and CEO Brian Armstrong called the new law the "beginning of a big financial revolution in the U.S."
Armstrong has spent a lot of time and effort, though, on the next major legislation pursued by the industry: a bill that sets regulations for crypto markets in the U.S.
"One down; one to go," he said. "We've got to get the market structure bill through, as well. Seven percent of crypto market cap is stabecoins, so that's a very important first step. The other 93% is going to be addressed by that market structure bill."
In the minutes before passing the GENIUS Act, the House of Representatives also voted 294-134 to send its market structure legislation known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to the Senate with a resounding bipartisan result.
Armstrong's company has been one of the primary backers of political action committee Fairshake, a towering super PAC that's spent incredible amounts of money congressional races, supporting candidates who commit to pro-crypto legislation. After success in dozens of races last year, Coinbase's largesse continued with
another recent $25 million addition
that brought Fairshake's war chest to $141 million well before the genuine start of next year's races.
"We feel like it's important to stand up for our customers' rights, and the job's not done yet," he said. Even after the market structure bill, he said, "I'm sure there'll be other things that come up in the future."
Armstrong said that Trump's chief crypto adviser, David Sacks, has assured the industry that he's serious about a recently discussed deadline for the next congressional effort: September 30.
For his part, President Trump talked about the GENIUS Act as if he'd already accomplished the monumental task of lifting U.S. crypto into place to modernize the financial system.
"Under this bill, the entire ancient system will be eligible for a 21st Century upgrade, using the state-of-the-art crypto technology," the president said before sitting at a table to sign the bill, mobbed by Republican lawmakers and crypto executives.
"Tomorrow is a new day, a new era," Ardoino said after the event. "We are very proud to be here and to be called out directly from the president, because it is the testament of all the good work that our team has done for the last years."
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Trump Signs GENIUS Act Into Law, Elevating First Major Crypto Effort to Become Policy
