Stablecoins stole the show at Bitcoin 2025

LAS VEGAS — On the world’s largest bitcoin conference this week on the Vegas Strip, probably the most consequential story wasn’t about bitcoin.

Stablecoins, the dollar-pegged digital tokens now driving a full-scale financial and political shift in Washington, stole the show.

The momentum behind stablecoin laws and crypto market reform is accelerating — and it’s attracting a brand new sort of donor, investor, and voter. That shift took center stage at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas.

Vice President JD Vance became the primary sitting U.S. vice chairman to handle the bitcoin community on Wednesday, delivering a full-throated endorsement of crypto.

“I feel it’s fallacious, actually, to call this only a conference,” Vance told a crowd of 35,000. “It is a movement. And I’m proud to face with you.”

“On this administration, we don’t think that stablecoins threaten the integrity of the U.S. dollar. Quite the alternative,” said Vance. “We view them as a force multiplier of our economic might.”

Stablecoins are designed to have a stable value against a non-crypto asset, normally the U.S. dollar.

“We’re streamlining payment rails for ensuring U.S. dollar global dominance for many years to return,” Bo Hines, a White House official heading up the president’s Digital Assets Council, told CNBC on the sidelines of Bitcoin 2025.

He added that stablecoin integration into the U.S. economic system could unlock trillions of dollars in global demand for American debt.

Those ambitions hinge on the passage of the GENIUS Act, a Senate bill that may establish the primary comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoin issuers.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., told the Bitcoin 2025 crowd that the bill would move to a cloture vote on Monday after weeks of negotiations with Democrats.

“We expect we have now a final deal,” Lummis said. “If we are able to get this passed, this can be the primary piece of digital asset laws to pass the U.S. Senate.”

On the House side, Republicans are racing to match that pace.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., praised Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., for pushing a “calcified” Senate to act at record speed and said the House is set to get each the stablecoin and broader market structure bills on President Donald Trump’s desk before the August recess.

“The president promised this,” Emmer said. “We would like it done now.”

Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wisc., who chairs the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, is leading efforts to advance companion laws and expects the bill to achieve the Financial Services Committee by July.

“Stablecoin issuers can be purchasing U.S. Treasuries at a time frame where that’s incredibly essential,” Steil told CNBC in Vegas. “It enshrines the U.S. dollar in our dominant role because the world’s reserve currency.”

Tether — the most important stablecoin issuer on the earth — now ranks among the many top buyers of U.S. Treasuries globally.

Steil dismissed Democratic efforts to propose an amendment banning government officials from profiting off stablecoin ventures. The Trump family has ties to World Liberty Financial and its newly-launched stablecoin USD1.

Kraken CEO Dave Ripley, who has been advising lawmakers behind the scenes, called the laws essential to bringing financial institutions — including consumer brokers and major banks — into the digital asset ecosystem.

But he cautioned that key provisions, including whether yield on stablecoins could be shared with users and the way government officials may participate out there, are still being debated.

“Crypto is all about individuals,” he said. “Let’s bring the worth to them.”

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said commodity trading firms can be “the largest driver” of stablecoin adoption in the subsequent five years. He’s already preparing for the subsequent wave of competition as mainstream financial players begin launching their very own digital dollars on the blockchain.

Ardoino, whose company controls greater than 60% of the stablecoin market, emphasized that traditional financial firms entering the stablecoin space can be constrained by their reliance on high-fee customers.

“All the normal financial firms will create stablecoins that can be offered to their existing customers,” he told CNBC.

In response to The Wall Street Journal, major banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citi are in early talks to issue a unified digital dollar to compete with Tether.

Tether, against this, is targeting the worldwide majority excluded from banking.

“Lots of our competitors say, ‘Oh, Tether is serving this area of interest of the unbanked,'” he said. “Half of the population of the world mustn’t be called a distinct segment.”

That global reach is one reason policymakers in Washington are moving fast.

Under Trump’s newly appointed regulatory team, momentum has shifted decisively.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which has been long viewed because the industry’s top adversary, has begun dismantling its enforcement-first framework, clearing the way in which for greater institutional participation in crypto.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the change was long overdue.

“For a few years now, I have been complaining in regards to the indisputable fact that the commission has not taken proactive steps to supply clarity, and now finally, we’re at a spot where we are able to do this,” she said.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, who has been meeting privately with the SEC, says tokenization — not only of dollars, but of private and non-private markets — is now within sight, even without recent laws.

“We have actually been engaging with the SEC crypto task force in addition to the administration,” he told CNBC. “And it’s our belief, actually, that we do not even need congressional motion to make tokenization real. The SEC can just do it.”

WATCH: Vice President Vance pitches stablecoins as recent pillar of U.S. economic diplomacy