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Cynthia Lummis

Stablecoins Take Center Stage at Senate’s First Digital Assets Subcommittee Hearing

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3 weeks ago

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Stablecoins and the role of Congress in addressing future digital assets legislation took center stage during one of the Senate Banking Committee’s first hearings to focus on what a regulatory framework for crypto may look like.

The Wednesday hearing, framed as the jumping-off point for further Congressional action on digital asset regulations, was the first hosted by the banking committee’s new digital assets subcommittee and chaired by Wyoming Republican Cynthia Lummis, a longtime crypto proponent.

“We’re on the precipice of finally creating a bipartisan legislative framework for both stablecoins and market structure,” Lummis said in her opening statement, referring to draft legislation she introduced with New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand as a natural counterpart to the House’s Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act.

Stablecoins will be first on the committee’s agenda though, she said, echoing statements made by White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks and South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, who chairs the overall Senate Banking Committee.

Former CFTC Chair Timothy Massad, one of the hearing’s four witnesses, told the lawmakers to focus on stablecoin legislation for the moment and defer any market structure efforts “for several years.”

“For four years, the crypto industry has called on the SEC and CFTC to develop rules and guidance and to stop regulating by enforcement; that is now happening,” he said. “The SEC has dropped enforcement cases and launched a crypto task force to tackle these issues. We should let these regulatory issue initiatives make progress before rushing to rewrite the securities law.”

Existing proposals to update market structure regulations to address crypto have the potential to “create more confusion than clarity,” he added, particularly around defining how a digital asset might be a security, commodity or something else.

These proposals could potentially undermine existing securities laws, especially if they address decentralized finance.

“That term is used to describe a lot of things that aren’t decentralized,” Massad continued. “There are almost always some vectors of control. And even if a process is decentralized or automated, that does not mean it should be exempt from regulation.”

Virginia Democrat Mark Warner asked the panelists to discuss the possibility of stablecoin users conducting know-your-customer processes, noting that an issuer may conduct KYC but that a stablecoin may be transferred between wallets without those intermediate transfers going through a KYC process.

“I want to get to a regulatory framework that works, but I have seen — echoing what others have said from the classified side — oh my gosh, a whole bunch of bad stuff,” Warner said. “So help me figure out, and I recognize [for] some people, the anonymity and and the disintermediation role the blockchain plays, but how do we put some minimum protections from issuer all the way back to conversion to fiat?”

Lightspark co-founder and Chief Legal Officer Jai Massari noted that even though self-custodied wallets don’t conduct KYC, “there is an immutable on-chain record of those transactions that can be monitored, not only by the issuer, but [by] third parties, including law enforcement.”

While mixers and other tools can obfuscate transactions, custodial wallets still conduct KYC at the end of a chain of transfers, she noted.

“I agree that we need to continue, as the industry has done, to develop new tools to address these issues,” said Massari.





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Bitcoin Policy Institute

US Senator And Congressman Introduce Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bills To Buy One Million BTC

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5 days ago

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March 12, 2025

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Today at the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s “Bitcoin for America” summit in Washington DC, U.S. Senator from Wyoming Cynthia Lummis announced that she is going to reintroduce her strategic Bitcoin reserve legislation in the Senate today.

“I am so pleased to announce that today I will be reintroducing The Bitcoin Act,” Senator Lummis stated. “And I’ll be joined here shortly by Senator Justice of West Virginia, who is one of the cosponsors. And we have several other additional cosponsors. And a lot of it is a result of the excitement that’s been building.”

“So far cosponsors are [Tommy] Tubberville, [Marsha] Blackburn, [Roger] Marshall, [Bernie] Moreno, and [Jim] Justice,” Lummis continued. “We have a couple more feelers out for original cosponsors today but, the House as well through Nick Begich, has six original consponsors.”

Complimentary to Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin act in the Senate, U.S. Congressman Nick Begich announced he will also be introducing the Bitcoin reserve legislation in the House today.

“Today, I will be introducing the Bitcoin Act of 2025 in the United States House,” Congressman Begich said. “This is a bold and forward looking legislative initiative designed to ensure the United States secures its financial independence and maintains its leadership in the global digital economy.”

“The momentum is in our hands and we need to make this happen. Thankfully, President Trump is with us and the opportunities are boundless,” Lummis concluded.

Just last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a federal strategic Bitcoin reserve. The reserve is to be made up of confiscated bitcoin by the federal government from hacks and seizures, creating an estimated reserve of about 200,000 BTC, pending an official audit. However, this reserve, as it stands, has the potential to be overturned by future presidential administrations. Legislation like the Bitcoin Act of 2025 would solve this potential issue as it would see the United States purchase 200,000 bitcoin per year until it has bought a total of 1,000,000 BTC — to be held for a minimum of 20 years.

$115 billion asset manager VanEck claims that this strategic bitcoin reserve “could help offset national debt”, stating that “if the U.S. government follows the BITCOIN Act’s proposed path – accumulating 1 million BTC by 2029 – our analysis suggests this reserve could offset around $21 trillion of national debt by 2049.”





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Cynthia Lummis

Why Bitcoin dropped following the US BTC reserve launch?

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1 week ago

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March 8, 2025

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On Mar. 7, 2025, crypto investor and Wolf of All Streets podcast host Scott Melker dedicated a huge part of his Wolf Den newsletter to the meaning of the Bitcoin reserve launch and the public reaction to it. Later that day, he added several statements via his X account, explaining the importance of this historic event.

The U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve creation

Donald Trump promised the launch of the Bitcoin stockpile during his speech in the summer of 2024 at the Nashville Bitcoin conference. Around the same time, Sen. Cynthia Lummis introduced the BTC reserve bill, which suggested that the U.S. should acquire one million bitcoins over five years. 

Expectations were high. Crypto X was full of posts with hopes that Trump would sign the Bitcoin reserve creation order right after the inauguration. The reality turned out to be less thrilling as Trump didn’t even mention crypto in his inauguration speech. However, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road, which he promised to do. The Bitcoin reserve plans were confirmed later, and Sen. Lummis joined the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets as a chair. 

On Mar. 6, the executive order to establish a Bitcoin reserve was signed. The reserve turned out to be different from the one Lummis proposed. Its spirit is much closer to the initial Trump vision of a stockpile made up of the seized bitcoins that the government will not sell. The reserve will be growing via seizures and forfeitures so that it will not use the taxpayers’ money. More than that, the reserve can be increased using other avenues not associated with taxes. 

Currently, the U.S. is holding around 200k bitcoins. The accurate amount is not clear yet, so the government is conducting an audit. The Digital Assets Stockpile was created on the same date. This one will include other cryptocurrencies, namely ETH, ADA, SOL, and XRP. Some allege there is a possibility for a conflict of interest as White House crypto czar David Sacks may indirectly profit from creating the reserve of these cryptocurrencies. Sacks denies these accusations.

Following the creation of the Bitcoin Reserve, the BTC price dropped by $5,000, while the creation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has always been perceived as a trigger that will let bulls out. Scott Melker explained why the price dropped and why the move was great despite the criticisms.

The price drop explained

Scott Melker decisively associates the price drop with the disappointment from those who were expecting that the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve launch would be followed by buying Bitcoin in large amounts.

Melker starts his message in the newsletter with “we did it,” calling recognizing Bitcoin as a strategic asset”[America’s] biggest move yet in the Bitcoin game.” From the start, Melker states that other countries will have to follow suit in the Bitcoin race. He stresses that the U.S. will barely tolerate being second after China in terms of the BTC reserve. As of now, the U.S. reserve may be less than the Chinese one. It sets the stage for the global Bitcoin race that will move the price up in the long term.

Further, Melker explains that the difference between the Digital Assets Stockpile and the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve indicates that the U.S. explicitly considers Bitcoin the only cryptocurrency fitting the criteria of a strategic asset worth finding potential acquisition avenues.

“While some critics argue this doesn’t immediately impact the market because the government isn’t actively buying Bitcoin yet, they’re missing the long-term significance. The U.S. just signaled that Bitcoin is here to stay as a key financial asset, and history tells us that when America sets the standard, the rest of the world follows”.

As for the price drop, Melker throws in another factor, saying that when the big news “drops into an illiquid market — leverage flushes out weak hands.” Then, the bigger investors show up, moving the price up. And that’s what actually happened next. The Wolf of All Streets host continues by saying that the global demand for Bitcoin stimulated by the SBR launch will increase the upward pressure in the long term.

Other reactions

There were angry voices across the Internet after the details of the BTC reserve were revealed. Many people were disappointed by the decision not to spend tax money to buy more Bitcoin. Some don’t even see much difference between U.S. Marshalls holding seized bitcoins and the U.S. Treasury holding the same coins in the SBR.

Understandingly, Scott Melker confronted this point of view as it ignores what is written in the order, which doesn’t deny the future budget-neutral BTC acquisitions. 

Jeff Park of Bitwise Invest dismissed the executive order, saying there was nothing strategic about it. Park said the entire SBR story turned out to be a major pump-and-dump chapter, and he is happy it’s over. 

Many Bitcoin bulls praised the move, expressing little to no disappointment, calling the executive order historical. For instance, Senator Lummis voiced her full support for the move despite her project being rejected. The only concern she raised was the lack of congressional support for the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

A prominent Bitcoin supporter using the moniker Bitcoin Therapist called the order “the most bullish news [he has] seen in the past four years.”

Anyways, the U.S. crossed the Rubicon. We’ll see what happens next.





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Bitcoin reserve

Standard Chartered Bank Re-focuses On $500,000 Bitcoin Target After Trump Crypto Reserve Announcement

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2 weeks ago

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March 3, 2025

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Just one day after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Bitcoin is going to “at the heart” of a national strategic crypto reserve, Standard Chartered Bank’s Head of Digital Asset Research Geoff Kendrick stated that he is now re-focusing on his “$500,000 bitcoin price target.”

“We have moved from selling rallies to buying dips,” Kendrick reportedly stated in an email. “And hence I re-focus on my $500,000 bitcoin target…Given these developments, which align with our previous expectations, we continue to target Bitcoin to reach $200,000 by year-end 2025. Thereafter, we expect Bitcoin to reach $300,000 by the end of 2026, $400,000 by the end of 2027, and $500,000 by the end of 2028, where it will likely remain until the end of 2029.”

Kendrick further discussed that Trump’s embrace of Bitcoin in a strategic reserve could fuel individual states to also adopt bitcoin reserves of their own, and eventually, hold as much bitcoin as the federal government all together. 

VanEck’s Matthew Sigel also recently put out a recent report on the potential accumulation of bitcoin by individual states, showcasing that if signed into law, the demand from these 20+ strategic bitcoin reserve bills could see states purchase over 242,787 BTC. You can track the status of these bills here on Bitcoin Laws.

Trump’s announcement of an official Bitcoin reserve potentially also may fuel support for Senator Cynthia Lummis’ Strategic Reserve Bill, unveiled at the Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville last summer, which would see the U.S. purchase 200,000 bitcoin per year until it has bought 1,000,000 BTC. Lummis has already met with Trump’s new Crypto Czar David Sacks and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about her Bitcoin reserve bill, and said in January that “Every legislator is giving this legislation a serious look. The time is now. The President is a visionary leader and we are ready to get this bill to his desk.”





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