Bills would reward these 25 crypto billionaires (including Trump) while the rest of us get fleeced

by Patrick Woodall

The crypto barbarians are at the gates. According to congressional Republicans, this week is “crypto week.” That’s code for their shameless plan to pass legislation expanding the wealth of 25 crypto billionaires while putting the rest of us — and the financial system — in harms way.

Less than two weeks after the Republicans passed a giant tax break for the super rich (paid for with savage cuts to Medicaid, nutrition programs, and more), they are teeing up two pieces of crypto legislation that will reward Big Tech and the crypto broligarchs but pose serious financial risks to small crypto investors, financial stability, and everybody else.

The Billionaire Winners

Twenty-five crypto and Big Tech billionaires — including President Trump — that together are already worth over $1 trillion on paper stand to rake in billions and billions more. Neither of the proposed crypto bills even pretend to address the unprecedented crypto conflicts of interest emanating from the White House.

The Rest of Us Lose Out

Both crypto bills are a bonanza for these billionaires and a bear trap for the rest of us. The so-called CLARITY Act would legitimize common risky and exploitative crypto practices, lock in pitifully weak investor protections, and exempt some of the scammiest crypto hustles from any oversight at all. The so-called GENIUS Act, dealing with stablecoins, would expose customers to risk without necessary safeguards, allow billionaires and Big Tech to profit from issuing their own currencies, and make it harder to fight criminal money laundering.

A Threat to the Entire Financial System

Both bills give the congressional seal of approval for cryptocurrencies and digital assets while weakening oversight, meaning that people and the financial institutions will be more willing to dabble in risky, volatile crypto investments but be essentially unprotected by the laws that protect investors in stocks, bonds, and other traditional securities. More fully integrating crypto into the mainstream financial system also brings the widespread fraud, scams, and criminal money laundering into banks and brokerages, posing real risks to the financial system and real economy. Crypto market blunders could imperil or topple banks (like the banking mini-crisis spurred by the crash of Silicon Valley Bank) that could be propagated throughout the financial system and harm millions of people and cost billions of dollars.

Both bills contend that they foster innovation in financial markets. This exact promise lay behind the financial deregulation of the late 1990s that directly led to the 2008 financial crisis when newfangled derivatives — good for Wall Street, less so for everyone else — capsized the economy and devastated the savings, homes, and livelihoods of tens of millions of people.

Both bills will supercharge the speculative frenzy That, in every financial bubble, makes the early, wealthy investors richer while fleecing smaller investors. It was only 3 years ago that the cryptocrash cost investors $2 trillion and caused a raft of crypto bankruptcies. A Bank of International Settlements study found that the crypto whales profited but the small investors (dismissively called krill) got pounded. And that doesn’t even address the massive amount of endemic fraud in the cryptoverse. According to the FBI, crypto scams swindled people out of more than $9.3 billion in 2024 — more than double the $4 billion in losses in 2022.

And both bills will enrich the crypto bro billionaires (they are all men) by paving the way for more and more crypto trading and investing, generating big bucks for the trading platforms, crypto issuers, and all the surrounding crypto ecosystem.

The Crypto Kings Win Big

The backers of trading platforms and blockchain exchanges and platforms like Binance, Coinbase, Ethereum, and Gemini all stand to make big bucks under the CLARITY Act. That includes Binance founder and convicted money launderer Changpeng “CZ” Zhou, whose firm helped Trump’s World Liberty Financial as he sought a presidential pardon. According to the Forbes Real Time Billionaire list, Zhou is already worth over $67 billion and the CLARITY Act would roll out the red carpet for his offshore exchange to return to the United States.

Coinbase is one of the biggest crypto exchanges and it stands to rake in profits under the CLARITY Act, especially since the Trump administration quashed a federal securities case alleging Coinbase was operating a crypto exchange without critical investor protections. Crypto billionaire Coinbase backers like Brian Armstrong (worth over $16 billion) and Fred Ehrsam (over $4 billion) will also see their fortunes rise.

The Mar-a-Lago billionaire crowd is poised to profit. That includes Trump confidant Peter Thiel (worth almost $22 billion), whose Founders Fund made $1.8 billion ditching Bitcoin before the crypto crash and then plowed $200 million more into Bitcoin just before the current Bitcoin bubble. Bitcoin backer, Trump advisor, and right-wing futurist Mark Andreessen, already worth $2 billion, will get richer.

Supercharging Stablecoins

The GENIUS Act would benefit a different crop of crypto billionaires. Tether operates the world’s biggest stablecoin, called USDT, with trading volume dwarfing Bitcoin, but it has been mired in controversies. It is widely seen as the money launder’s token of choice, and not being fully backed by reserves that drew a $41 million penalty by U.S. regulators and an $18 million penalty in New York. Billionaire Tether backers and investors Jean-Louis van der Velde and Paolo Ardoino (each worth $9.5 billion) and Stuart Hoegner (worth over $6 billion) stand to profit handsomely from the GENIUS Act.

And the legislation would allow Big Tech companies to launch their own stablecoins, essentially creating their own corporate currencies. The companies could force or incentivize their customers to use their own stablecoins and generate a gusher of profits. The combination of banking and commerce also has real financial stability implications, since severe business headwinds or economic crises impacting the company could undermine their affiliated stablecoins,and vice versa. 

Big Tech billionaires are champing at the bit to launch stablecoins. Amazon plans to issue its own stablecoins, allowing it to coerce people to use it on its dominant retail platform generating tons of profits that will easily pay for Jeff Bezos’ $50 million wedding (he is already worth more than $200 billion, but every million counts). Elon Musk’s X is purportedly in talks to integrate stablecoins into its emerging payments platform X Money which could only add to his nearly $400 billion pile. Mark Zuckerburg’s (nearly $250 billion) Meta is again considering launching its own stablecoin after it shuttered its previous stablecoin efforts in 2022 under severe regulatory and political pressure. 

Kleptocrat-in-Chief and the Crypto Robber Barons

These crypto billionaires are poised to become the Robber Barons of our era, but the most brazen cash grab is reserved for the crypto kleptocrat President Trump who is worth $5.3 billion. His preposterous memecoin launched just before the inauguration raked in $1.1 billion for about 60 insiders while more than 760,000 small investors lost their shirts. 

Trump Media & Technology Group launched a partnership with crypto.com to sell crypto exchange traded funds in April and last week sought regulatory approval to sell crypto ETFs on the stock market (does anyone think Trump’s regulators will reject this application?). 

The Trump family World Liberty Financial launched a USD1 stablecoin in March and in May USD1 was used to make a $2 billion investment in Binance (there’s CZ and Trump again). These crypto ventures have added at least $620 million to Trump’s personal net worth in only a few months and crypto now constitutes $2.9 billion of his family’s wealth. 

If Congress sends these deeply flawed crypto bills to the president’s desk, it will further enrich these crypto billionaires. There is a surreal and sickly corruption afoot when  crypto billionaire Trump signs crypto legislation into law that directly enriches his family. All of the billionaire crypto whales are poised to get even richer after Congress’ crypto giveaway week, while the rest of us krill get eaten.

*as of July 13, 2025