President Donald Trump’s top crypto advisor is sparking optimism in getting broader cryptocurrency legislation passed into law.
Months ago, negotiations involved a dozen issues that “all felt impractical, unsolvable to camps that had irreconcilable differences,” said Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, on Monday at an event hosted by the Solana Policy Institute in Brooklyn. That has since been slimmed down, he added.
“I’m encouraged by the fact that we solved a lot of these that felt unsolvable,” Witt added.Â
Congress is back in Washington, D.C. after a two-week recess, and a key Senate committee is expected to hold a hearing to vote on that sweeping bill, unlocking the next step to get it passed into law — a major policy goal for the crypto industry. Legislation would clarify jurisdiction between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, establish rules for exchanges, and require disclosures.
One of the most closely watched issues is the treatment of stablecoin rewards, which has drawn attention as the White House, lawmakers, and stakeholders have all weighed in recently.
Stablecoin rewards were addressed in stablecoin law, passed in July, which prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest directly to holders. However, it does not restrict third-party platforms, such as Coinbase, from offering rewards. Crypto firms have contended that limiting rewards would stifle innovation, while banking industry advocacy groups argued that allowing rewards could draw deposits away from traditional institutions.
In a White House report released last week, economists found that stablecoin rewards are unlikely to meaningfully dent bank lending or broader credit conditions. On Monday, American Bankers Association economists pushed back and said that the White House was analyzing the wrong question. The concern is not about whether banning yield would affect bank lending — it is about whether allowing it “would encourage deposit flight,” they said in their analysis.
“By focusing on the effects of a prohibition, the CEA [Council of Economic Advisers] paper risks creating a misleading sense of safety by avoiding the much more consequential scenario: yield-paying payment stablecoins scaling quickly,” they said.
Another issue that has arisen in negotiations is protecting software developers. Politico reported last week that there have been disagreements between law enforcement groups and crypto over whether language could impede law enforcement’s ability to fight crime.
On the third outstanding issue — ethics — SkyBridge Capital founder and White House communications director under the first Trump administration, Anthony Scaramucci, said he would favor a Trump administration over a Biden administration “for this industry any day.”
“The one issue, though, that I do think is hurting us is that the president and his family decided that they wanted to get in the industry,” Scaramucci said during a separate panel on Monday, specifically his memecoin activity. Both Trump and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, launched their respective memecoins TRUMP and MELANIA in January 2025.
Next, the Senate Banking Committee is expected to schedule a hearing to amend and vote on crypto legislation before the end of the month. A spokesperson for the Senate Banking Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on timing.
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