White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks held his first crypto-focused press conference on Tuesday, outlining legislative priorities and teasing the Trump Administration’s first major stabs at regulating the novel industry: a markets structure bill and a comprehensive stablecoin bill.
At the event, which featured key leadership from the Senate and House, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) said he intends for both key crypto bills to pass votes in the Senate by the end of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office—a deadline less than three months away from today.
Scott added that a stablecoin bill introduced Tuesday by Sen. Bill Hagery (R-TN) is likely to advance first.
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That bill, dubbed the GENIUS Act, would create a pathway to concrete legality for issuers of U.S. dollar-backed stablecoins. Stablecoins, which allow crypto users to park funds in steady on-chain tokens tied to assets like the U.S. dollar, have risen to dominance as a critical tool linking the increasingly intertwined worlds of traditional finance and digital assets.
Among other requirements, the GENIUS Act would obligate stablecoin issuers to send out monthly audited reports on the health of the fiat reserves backing their products, and punish any company that falsely reports on their reserves with criminal charges, according to a draft of the bill seen by Decrypt.
At Tuesday's press conference, Republican chairs of the House Financial Services Committee, Senate Banking Committee, House Agriculture Committee, and Senate Agriculture Committee also announced plans to form a comprehensive bicameral working group that will coordinate on crypto legislation in lockstep with Sacks and the White House.
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“Financial assets are destined to become digital, just like every analog industry has become digital,” Sacks said. “And we want that value creation to happen in the United States.”
When asked on Tuesday about FIT21, a crypto markets structure bill that passed the House last year with bipartisan support, House Financial Services chair French Hill (R-AR) said the bill “had the basics,” but that a new markets structure bill introduced in coming months could include “some modest changes.”
Decrypt previously reported that, in light of its sweeping political victories in November, the crypto lobby appears intent on ditching FIT21 in favor of legislation even more favorable to the industry.
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At Tuesday’s crypto-focused press conference, Sacks also faced questions about a federal crypto reserve, which is currently being mulled by the White House. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order ordering the creation of an American sovereign wealth fund, which sparked excitement among crypto circles given the close ties between other state-backed wealth funds and digital assets like Bitcoin.
Sacks clarified, however, that while he and his crypto working group will soon investigate the merits of a crypto strategic reserve, Trump’s announced sovereign wealth fund is “a little separate" from those considerations.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
