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cryptocurrency
Warren Unveils Framework for Regulating Crypto Industry and Shutting Down Trump's Corruption
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said the senator.
Jul 09, 2025
As the U.S. House prepares to vote on the latest proposal claiming to regulate the cryptocurrency industry—one that critics say is actually a "cash grab" that will harm consumers—Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday took the opportunity of a hearing on digital assets to outline her five main priorities for any legislation aimed at regulating crypto.
Along with protecting consumers within the crypto market, she said, Congress must pass legislation that safeguards the country from public officials—including President Donald Trump—who want to personally profit from the burgeoning industry.
Those priorities haven't been addressed, she suggested, in proposals like the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which lawmakers are expected to vote on in the coming days.
"I'm concerned that what my Republican colleagues are aiming for is another industry handout that gives the crypto lobby exactly its wish list: the blessing of the government's approval, combined with crypto rules that are weaker than the rules every other financial actor must follow," said Warren (D-Mass.).
Any regulatory framework for the crypto industry, in which investors can use real money to purchase virtual or digital assets and trade them on decentralized, unregulated blockchain technology, must include the framework set up by "the securities laws that have served as the bedrock of our capital markets for nearly 100 years," said Warren—but the CLARITY Act includes language that would allow "non-crypto companies to tokenize their assets to evade the SEC's [Security and Exchange Commission] regulations."
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time."
"Under the House bill, a publicly traded company like Meta or Tesla could simply decide to put its stock on the blockchain and POOF! it would escape all SEC regulation," said Warren.
Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) also spoke out against the CLARITY Act's provision on Tuesday, saying the bill would "create a race to the bottom and fuel fraud and financial instability."
With the crypto market growing 15-fold over the last five years, with a $3 trillion market capitalization in 2024, risks to "investors, our financial system, and our national security have also sharply increased," Warren warned in the hearing.
She pointed to FBI findings that Americans lost more than $9 billion to fraud in the unregulated crypto market last year—a 66% increase from 2023‚ and a Chainalysis report that hackers from North Korea were able to steal $1.3 billion from crypto platforms in 2024 as well as $1.5 billion earlier this year.
"Crypto investors should have the same protections from getting scammed or cheated as investors in any other asset," said Warren. "For example, there is no reason that the rules prohibiting stock exchanges from simultaneously serving as brokers and giving preferential treatment to their own trades over their customers' can't be applied to the crypto market too."
Warren also called for legislation that ensures instability in the crypto market won't "infect" the larger financial system by guaranteeing that taxpayers are not on the hook for "risky crypto bets," and that includes commonsense rules to protect national security and fight crime within the industry.
The GENIUS Act, which 18 Democrats joined the vast majority of Senate Republicans in passing last month, did not include anti-money laundering rules or sufficiently close sanctions loopholes, said Warren, with Republicans saying the issues could be addressed in a future bill regarding crypto market structure.
"So this is it. No more kicking the can down the road. Now is the time to solve that problem," said Warren.
Finally, Warren said any bill addressing regulations in the crypto market must "shut down the president's crypto corruption" by prohibiting all public officials from issuing, sponsoring, or profiting from crypto tokens.
Warren's comments came weeks after Trump held a dinner with the top 220 investors in his own $TRUMP meme coin and offered a VIP White House tour to the top 25 mostly anonymous investors—an event that progressive organizers said was "corruption embodied."
"Nobody wants weak crypto rules more than the president of the United States," said Warren, noting that $7 billion of Trump's wealth now comes from his own stablecoin and meme coin, a bitcoin mining company, a "huge portfolio of crypto investments," and includes more than $320 million in fees from the $TRUMP coin—even as the majority of investors in the token lost money.
"If we're going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time," said Warren.
Urging Congress to vote against the CLARITY Act this week, AFR also warned that the "massive deregulatory bill" is backed by "a gusher of campaign cash and lobbying muscle from ultrawealthy venture capital firms and crypto billionaires," with Trump set to "gain the most from this giveaway" after making $1.2 billion in crypto just in the past few months."
"CLARITY (along with related crypto bills being considered) is a custom-built framework that gives him and his billionaire allies a green light to manipulate financial markets," said the group, "while working families are left holding the bag."
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With the Crypto Industry War Chest Looming, Senate Democrats Help GOP Pass GENIUS Act
Democrats "need to win the next election, which means we can not afford to alienate a very vocal and wealthy group of donors," wrote one lawyer who works with crypto clients.
Jun 18, 2025
Over the objections of critics who say a landmark cryptocurrency bill lacks adequate consumer and financial system protections, among other concerns, several Senate Democrats voted with Republicans on Tuesday to pass the legislation that would establish a regulatory framework for a type of crypto called stablecoin.
The Senate voted 68-30 to pass the bill, which is backed by the crypto industry, with two Republicans senators voting no. The bill's journey to Senate passage—which at one point seemed in doubt—comes after crypto groups spent tens of millions in support of candidates for federal office in the 2024 election cycle. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives.
Among the Democrats who voted for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS, Act are Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and the bill's co-sponsor Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), both of whom received support from pro-crypto entities last year.
The full list of Democrats who voted in favor of the bill is: Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.); Cory Booker (D-N.J.); Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.); John Fetterman (D-Penn.); Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.); Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.); Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.); Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.); John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.); Andy Kim (D-N.J.); Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.); Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.); Alex Padilla (D-Calif.); Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.); Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.); Mark Warner (D-Va.); and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Acting CEO and president of the Crypto Council for Innovation, Ji Kim, called the Senate's passage of the bill a "historic step forward for the digital asset industry," in a prepared statement shared in advance of the vote, according to the outlet CoinDesk.
The Senate's passage of the bill came one day after the outlet The Lever reported that "a private group chat of Democratic Party operatives and crypto industry advocates has been secretly coordinating to push Democratic senators" to support the bill.
The Lever reviewed the contents of a Signal chat which contained messages from venture capitalists, lobbyists, lawyers for crypto firms, former staffers on Capitol Hill, and others. Participants in the chat expressed the need for the Democrats to pass the bill in order to avoid alienating the crypto industry.
Avichal Garg, a managing partner at a venture capital firm that focuses on digital asset technology like cryptocurrency, said in the chat that "if Dems bail on this [bill], they will get 0 dollars going forward," according to The Lever.
"It would be political suicide for them not to support it," he added.
Jason Gottlieb, a lawyer who works for the law firm Morrison Cohen and defends cryptocurrency companies, wrote in the chat that regardless of concerns about the shortcomings of the bill, Democrats "need to win the next election, which means we can not afford to alienate a very vocal and wealthy group of donors," The Lever reported.
Last year, the industry pumped more than $40 million into a successful effort to topple former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio in favor of his Republican challenger luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno.
No one has been a bigger critic of the GENIUS Act than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, who has warned that in addition to weak protections for consumers and financial stability, the bill allows tech companies to issue their own private currencies and "take control over the money supply."
She also said that the GENIUS Act mirrors the passage of the 2000 passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which deregulated derivatives and helped the product proliferate in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008.
"It all sounds very similar. But there is one big difference between the GENIUS Act and the CFMA," said Warren on the Senate floor earlier in June, according to a copy of her remarks. "President [Bill] Clinton did not own a derivatives company. President [Donald] Trump does own a stablecoin company."
Warren told Rolling Stone ahead of key votes that the GENIUS ACT would "create a superhighway for Donald Trump's corruption."
Earlier this year, the Trump family's crypto company, World Liberty Financial, launched its own stablecoin called USD1.
In May, it was announced that USD1 would be used for a $2 billion deal between an investment firm established by the government of Abu Dhabi, MGX, and the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.
The GENIUS Act bars executive branch officials and lawmakers from issuing stablecoins, but according to the Wall Street Journal, "it isn't clear how that would affect the Trump family's World Liberty Financial crypto firm because regulators would have to interpret the company's ownership structure."
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'Release the Names': Raskin Opens Probe Into Trump's Corrupt Meme Coin Dinner
"We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal," said the congressman.
May 29, 2025
Calling U.S. President Donald Trump's recent dinner with cryptocurrency investors "the latest in a bewildering gamut of schemes" aimed at making a profit off the presidency, Rep. Jamie Raskin is demanding the White House release the names of those who attended the event—warning that Americans currently don't know whether foreign governments, criminal enterprises, or other groups may have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for Trump's meme coin.
Trump held an "intimate private dinner" with the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency memecoin, which has no underlying value but nonetheless reached $14 billion in market value after the president announced its release just before his inauguration.
The coin quickly collapsed and lost 90% of its value, but surged by more than 50% after Trump announced the May 22 dinner at his golf club outside Washington, D.C.
Little is known about many of the top purchasers of the coin, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, which found 28 untraceable "ghost wallets" were behind some purchases. About half of the top 220 owners received coins from crypto exchanges that reject U.S.-based customers, suggesting they could be foreign buyers.
"A close analysis of the top buyers on the 'leaderboard' on the website of $TRUMP shows that a majority of the attendees appear to be foreign nationals who purchased the token through offshore cryptocurrency exchanges that prohibit U.S. customers from participating," wrote Raskin (D-Md.). "Analysis reveals that 161 of the 220 top buyers, or 73% of the invitees, are likely foreign nationals. Among the top 25 'VIP' guests who were offered additional private access to you, including a 'VIP White House tour'—and who each spent between $1.25 million and $16 million on $TRUMP tokens—23 out of 25 are likely foreign individuals or entities."
The congressman also asked what steps the White House had taken to determine the source of funds used by purchasers to pay for the coin, noting that if the money came from foreign governments, the purchasers could be seeking to influence the president.
"I write today to demand that you release the names of all the attendees at this dinner and provide information about the source of the money they each used to buy $TRUMP coins, so that we can prevent illegal foreign government emoluments from being pocketed without congressional consent," wrote Raskin. "Publication of this list will also let the American people know who is putting tens of millions of dollars into our president's pocket so we can start to figure out what—beyond virtually worthless memecoins—they are getting in exchange for all this money."
The Trump Organization, the president's family business, operates the meme coin along with a company registered in Delaware and run by Trump ally Bill Zanker. The two companies own 80% of the 1 billion $TRUMP coins, have received $312 million from crypto sales since Trump took office, and profited from the coin sales at the dinner, in which buyers were not subject to disclosure requirements as they would be for campaign donations.
Raskin pointed to one attendee and buyer whose identity is known—Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun—as more evidence of corruption at the dinner. Sun was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year for illegally distributing billions of crypto assets and concealing payments to celebrity endorsers to promote his cryptocurrency. The charges were dropped after Sun purchased $75 million in another Trump crypto venture. Sun reportedly bought $23 million in $TRUMP coins.
When asked last week whether the White House would release the names of dinner attendees, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she would "raise that question" but claimed the event was one that Trump attended "in his personal time" and not in an official capacity.
Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, applauded Raskin for opening the investigation. During both of Trump's terms, CREW has demanded accountability for Trump's alleged violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which bars presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments.
"Your White House has repeatedly promised a presidency that is the 'most transparent and accessible' in American history," wrote Raskin to the president. "But so far, you have failed to deliver, refusing to divulge even the names of the largely foreign attendees at your world-famous crypto dinner. The American people deserve better and, given our constitutional strictures against foreign government money going to our president, this is a matter of great urgency and importance. We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal, rather than the proceeds from foreign states or monarchs or illegal activities."
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