GENIUS stablecoin act headed to final vote in US Senate amid scrutiny of Trump’s crypto interests

Lawmakers in Washington are poised to vote Tuesday on a major stablecoin bill as questions linger over how U.S. President Donald Trump’s growing crypto affiliations could affect the future of digital asset legislation.

After weeks of committee votes, negotiations, cloture votes, a few versions of the bill and amendments, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS for short, could soon be well on its way to passing the full Senate.

The Senate voted to move forward with the bill last week via cloture — a procedural move that clears the way for further debate, setting it up for a vote on Tuesday. That comes after a first vote attempt failed last month after it garnered no support from Democrats.

Democrats had cited concerns over provisions related to foreign issuers, anti-money laundering standards, potential corporate issuance of stablecoins, and Trump’s deepening ties to crypto ventures, including one that recently launched a stablecoin. Over time, changes have been made to the bill to address those concerns.

And enough Democrats of late have voted yes to reach the 60-vote threshold. During the latest cloture vote, lawmakers voted 68 to 30, with 18 Democrats in support.

“Overall, it does seem like it’s tracking to be at least for GENIUS passed out of the Senate by Tuesday,” said Ron Hammond, head of policy and advocacy at Wintermute, in an interview with The Block, noting that the situation was fluid. “Democrats seem to be largely coming around to support at least the stablecon bills as of right now.”

Hammond noted that a separate bill to regulate the crypto industry at large is a “whole different story.”

The Senate bill would require stablecoins to be fully backed by U.S. dollars or similarly liquid assets, mandate annual audits for issuers with more than $50 billion in market capitalization, and add language around foreign issuance.

The bill also blocks non-financial publicly traded firms, such as Meta and Amazon, from issuing stablecoins unless they meet certain criteria involving financial risk and privacy for consumer data. It also includes language around bankruptcy so that stablecoin holders are given “super-priority status in bankruptcy proceedings, giving them the legal right to recover their money first in the unlikely event of an insolvency and protects existing bank depositors from reserve claims from an issuer,” according to a fact sheet.

Trump family ties

One sticking point that has come up repeatedly is Trump’s ties to his affiliated venture, World Liberty Financial, which recently launched its stablecoin. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has been critical of crypto, urged lawmakers last week to vote no on GENIUS, citing the company.

“That stablecoin is already the 5th largest stablecoin in the world and foreign investors have begun to exploit this avenue for corruption,” Warren said in a statement.

A few provisions have been added to GENIUS to address conflicts of interest, a Democratic Senate aide told The Block.

One of those was a prohibition on allowing members of Congress and executive branch officials from being directly involved in the issuance of a stablecoin. There is also a new section in the bill that requires an annual disclosure if a government official owns $5,000 worth of a payment stablecoin.

The latest version of the GENIUS Act does not directly address World Liberty Financial’s issuance of a stablecoin. President Trump’s sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump, and Barron Trump are listed as co-founders on its website.

“There is a constitutional limitation,” the Democratic Senate aide said. It is not clear that constitutionally a bill can go after a “non-minor child of a president,” they said.

“So we were very aware of constitutional limitations and wanted to make sure it was a direct prohibition of government officials while they were serving,” the aide said. The bill can’t prohibit the Trump family’s business interests, they added.

“The family is the difficult part,” they said.

The Democratic Senate aide also noted the emoluments clause, which blocks federal officials from accepting payments and gifts from foreign governments without a sign-off from Congress.

What happens next?

The House has its own version of a stablecoin bill that has some differences compared to GENIUS, such as state pathways and treatment of foreign issuers. The House Financial Services Committee advanced its own stablecoin legislation, the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy Act, out of its committee in May, but has not yet gone to a full House vote.

The House could decide to take up the GENIUS Act instead, said Jennifer Schulp, director of financial regulation studies at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

“If the STABLE Act passes in the form that it is now, it doesn’t match the GENIUS Act,” Schulp said in an interview. “That process will be much slower if they’re expecting to get something done by August.”

It seems more likely the House will take on GENIUS, given that the Senate version has the essential bipartisan support, Schulp said.

“The fact that GENIUS moved further away from where STABLE is, I think, is an indicator that GENIUS is a lot closer to the minimum of what it would take to get the bipartisan support in the Senate to pass,” she said.