President Trump has signed the GENIUS Act into law, with the goal of creating a federal regulatory system for stablecoins in the administration’s push to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” (their words). Among other changes, GENIUS clarifies that stablecoins are not securities, pegs stablecoins to the dollar through more liquid assets like treasuries, subjects stablecoin issuers to AML standards, and places most stablecoin players under the purview of entities like the OCC. Formally bringing blockchain-based tech into the regulatory fold is expected to embolden an industry working to restore its tarnished reputation since the collapse of stablecoin Terra in May 2022; the fraud-induced collapse of crypto exchange FTX in November 2022; and the frightening yet temporary depegging of Circle-issued stablecoin USDC after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023.
Yet as Peter Renton wrote for Fintech Nexus last month, “The stablecoin revolution isn’t coming, it’s already here.”
Myriad, long-standing ties between crypto and the Trump administration (and affiliated family businesses) have made something like GENIUS appear inevitable. Regulatory changes following Trump’s re-inauguration have reinvigorated interest in stablecoins among major banks and FIs. In the opening days of the second Trump administration, the SEC rescinded an accounting requirement that forced banks and others to list the cryptocurrencies they custodied on behalf of others as a liability on their balance sheet, which dissuaded banks from offering crypto custody services. And in March, then-acting OCC head Rodney Hood overturned a Biden-era directive that had compelled banks to prove that they had “controls in place to conduct [stablecoin] activity in a safe and sound manner” before using stablecoin-based products and services. Market moves abound: from JPMorgan’s reported foray into crypto-backed loans, to Fiserv’s “bank-friendly” stablecoin issuance, to a bulge-bracket consortium coalescing around stablecoin development.
In other payments news, Stripe scooped up paytech Orum. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but Orum CEO Stephany Kirkpatrick said in a blog post “It became clear that we have a rare opportunity to accelerate Orum’s mission and greatly increase our impact by becoming part of Stripe, which processed more than $1.4 trillion in total payment volume in 2024 — the equivalent of 1.3% of global GDP.” Earlier this year, Fintech Nexus reported on the New York-based payment rail orchestration platform’s tie-up with Visa, where Kirkpatrick described Orum as the “Amazon of money movement.”
Speaking of Visa, we recently spoke with Director of Product Management Raman Aulukah about BNPL, as the company has piqued interest in the space following recent partnerships with Klarna and Zilch.
–The Editors
