The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act cleared its most daunting hurdle on 20 May, when the Senate voted 66-32 to invoke cloture, ending any filibuster and formally opening debate on the bill. That decisive procedural win, the second-largest crypto vote in Senate history, means the United States is now a floor vote away from its first bespoke stable-coin statute, a move with profound consequences for dollar hegemony, bank funding costs and the still-feral crypto markets. In other words, the fact that the GENIUS Act passes the US Senate, hints at the start of a legislative knife-fight that could redefine what counts as money in Washington.
The vote
Procedural cloture demands 60 votes, so the bipartisan tally signals that outright passage is now likely once amendment theatre is exhausted. Sixteen Democrats broke ranks to join Republicans, reversing an 8 May failure and underscoring how tweaks on Big Tech issuance, foreign-issuer vetting and executive-branch self-dealing were enough to lure back centrists such as Mark Warner and Kirsten Gillibrand. Majority Leader John Thune has pencilled a final vote for “late this week, maybe before Memorial Day,” but expects a volley of floor speeches first.
Inside the 211-page bill
At its core the Act treats “payment stablecoins” as neither securities nor commodities, carving them out of decades-old definitions in the ’34 Exchange Act and SIPA. Issuers must hold one-to-one reserves in cash or Treasuries, publish monthly attestations and submit to Fed-style prudential oversight once circulation tops $10 billion; sub-$10 billion players may stay under state regimes, a nod to Wyoming and New York’s sandbox models. Algorithmic coins are banned outright, foreign issuers face a newly minted “Stablecoin Certification Review Committee,” and yielding stablecoins are limited to insured depositories. Taken together, the architecture mirrors MiCA lite (heavy on disclosure, light on prescriptive capital ratios) but crucially preserves dollar primacy by hard-wiring demand for short-term paper.
The politics of plastic dollars
Republicans tout the bill as a low-tax, high-treasury-demand engine for “crypto-dollarisation,” while Democratic critics call it a Trojan horse for Trump-adjacent ventures such as USD1, the World Liberty token. Elizabeth Warren deemed the draft “worse than no bill at all,” but Warner’s refrain (that abandoning the field to offshore issuers would be “regulatory unilateral disarmament”) ultimately framed the cloture pivot. The White House, eager for a pre-election crypto deliverable and fresh Treasury buyers, is signalling support, though officials hint they still want tighter AML language on offshore custodians.
Market calculus
Traders greeted the vote with a modest pop: USDC’s market share ticked up 40 basis points overnight and T-bill repo desks report inbound calls from hedge funds exploring on-chain settlement. Analysts argue the framework could “turbo-charge” the sector by letting household-name banks like BofA launch branded tokens, potentially adding $120 billion of synthetic deposits inside 18 months. Yet offshore juggernauts such as Tether, holding 60 per cent of global float, would either submit to U.S. scrutiny or see their tokens geo-fenced (a scenario that could accelerate consolidation and stoke liquidity squeezes in Asia).
What happens next
Senators Warren and Van Hollen are readying amendments on conflict-of-interest blind trusts and a sunset clause for the committee that can green-light Big Tech issuers. If those pass, House Financial Services chair French Hill has hinted he will accept the Senate text “largely intact,” sidestepping conference limbo. Even so, Capitol-Hill veterans note that a single ethics scandal (or a crypto market wobble) could still derail momentum, recalling the 2022 Lummis-Gillibrand bill that died after Terra’s implosion.
Closing thoughts
Stablecoins already settle more onchain value each week than Visa swipes in the U.S.; bringing that shadow banking system inside the regulatory perimeter promises cheaper remittances, deeper Treasury demand and a programmable dollar. Yet the price is a quiet redesign of money issuance, from a sovereign monopoly to a licensed-issuer cartel (a victory lap for Silicon Valley’s balance-sheet hobbyists and a potential migraine for the Fed’s control of M2). As the Senate now decides whether to make private-sector dollars an official export, the rest of the world is watching the world’s reserve currency mutate in real time.