- Since the 2024 election campaigns, President Donald Trump has been nothing short of strategic in his agenda of declaring the US the crypto Capital.
- Under this plan, he is to sign the new cryptocurrency regulation bill before the August congressional recess.
In his keynote speech at the ongoing Consensus 2025 event in Toronto, which began on May 14 and concludes tomorrow, Bo Hines, Executive Director at the President‘s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, made a significant appearance to shed light on the landscape of U.S. cryptocurrency legislation.
Hines expressed confidence in the administration’s progress toward enacting comprehensive digital asset regulations. “Negotiations are ongoing. But I remain steadfast in my optimism that we’re going to achieve this,” he said. “The President’s desire is to do it, to pass stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess.”
Among the more partisan efforts is one being pushed by Senator Cynthia Lummis and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who are co-sponsoring legislation that seeks to put consumer protection and ethical standards at the top of the stablecoin space. It is hoped that this will steer discussion away from party brawling and instead seek to have a clear regulatory environment.
Stablecoins are a form of cryptocurrency that is stabilized against assets. These assets could be fiat money like the U.S. dollar, commodities, or even other cryptocurrencies. The primary benefit of stablecoins is offering relative stability in what would otherwise be an unstable crypto market.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and U.S. Holdings
This legislative effort is made as another development unfolds: the U.S. increased interest in Bitcoin as a strategic asset. The largest national Bitcoin reserve is the U.S., with 207,189 BTC, followed by China with 194,000 BTC, the U.K. with 61,000 BTC, and Ukraine with at least 46,351 BTC.
Trump, in March, signed an executive order to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as a perpetual national asset. The reserve is to be built with Bitcoin purchased from Treasury forfeitures alone, and no additional assets will be acquired.
Legislative momentum isn’t limited to the federal level. As mentioned in our earlier news piece, over 19 U.S. states have seen state-level Bitcoin reserve bills. While some, like Pennsylvania and Wyoming, saw their bills stall in the legislative pipeline, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah were able to get their bills out of committee.
Ethical Concerns
However, the administration’s ambitions haven’t come without scrutiny. Critics have raised concerns over potential conflicts of interest tied to Trump’s family and their involvement in crypto-related ventures like the TRUMP meme coin, World Liberty Finance, and an upcoming mining firm.
Addressing the controversy directly at the conference, Bo Hines remarked:
His sons have the right to engage in capital markets as private business people, like anyone else does in the U.S. I don’t see any conflict in doing so. By the way, it should be exciting that they’re engaging in this space.
Hines concluded his remarks by reinforcing the administration’s broader ambitions:
As we launch these tariff negotiations and trade negotiations play themselves out, we want to establish ourselves as a leader in digital asset financial technology more generally.
The administration, he explained, is working to create a balanced regulatory environment, one that encourages innovation and capital formation while ensuring robust safeguards for individual investors and the financial system at large.
