FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 19, 2025
CONTACT: Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Deeply Flawed Stablecoin Legislation Moves Forward in Senate
Some Democrats join Republicans to endorse bill legitimizing Trump’s crypto corruption
Washington, DC – Today, the Senate voted to advance the GENIUS Act (S. 1582) for a final Senate vote, despite clear evidence that this legislation makes investors and consumers less financially secure, threatens to destabilize our financial system, and would legitimize Trump’s crypto grifts.
“The legislation has many flaws, and they have not gone away since the day senators voted the bill down,” said Mark Hays, associate director of cryptocurrency and financial technology at Americans for Financial Reform. “It seeks to embed stablecoins into the financial mainstream, without meaningful and effective consumer and investor protections or regulatory safeguards to prevent stablecoins from being tools for official corruption that is on obvious display with the Trump family.”
The GENIUS Act fails to have any guarantees to prevent elected officials and holders of high office from profiteering on crypto ventures. Within a few months, the presidential family’s crypto business has generated $2.9 billion. His crypto exchange World Liberty Financial has announced a deal with a government backed firm in Abu Dhabi to invest $2 billion into Binance, a crypto platform infamous for money laundering violations.
Trump corruption led Democrats to oppose the legislation on May 8, but the bill has not meaningfully changed. And since then, more details have emerged about the Trump memecoin dinner and new revelations linking Chinese investors to an effort to influence Trump’s decisions around the social media application TikTok.
“The President of the United States, the holder of the highest office in our nation, is flagrantly destroying any concept of ethical conduct and profiteering through his own crypto ventures,” said Hays. “Voting to move this legislation effectively endorses the abuse of the presidential office and rubber stamps a host of cryptocurrency practices that can defraud investors, perpetuate illicit finance, and threaten to unravel our financial system.”
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