Credit: (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
WASHINGTON — Senators are poised to take up legislation on cryptocurrency, forms of hard-to-trace digital payment that high-powered computers generate by solving math problems, when they return in mid-September to Capitol Hill from their summer recess.
An object of the cryptocurrency lobby, the bill perched in the Senate would carve out regulatory ground rules for the industry, including jurisdiction for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the lesser-known Commodities and Futures Trading Commission.
Yet the U.S. politics around cryptocurrency — a source of more than $1.16 billion for President Trump last year, according to his financial disclosure — have shifted starkly since Congress passed a crypto bill into law in 2025. The disclosure runs 927 pages and shows thousands of the president’s transactions, assets, liabilities and business ventures, including golf courses and hotels.
Following’s the filing of Trump’s disclosure in late June, senior Senate Democrats pushed for congressional hearings into the Trump family’s financial ties with crypto currency businesses. Among the senior Democrats were Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the highest-ranking members of their party on the Senate’s banking and finance committees.
Family business
That demand for oversight from Democrats is likely to continue in light of the approval last week of a cryptocurrency business for Trump and his sons, Donald Jr., Eric and Baron.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Aug. 14 approved a banking charter for World Liberty Financial, a firm run by the three Trump sons and the sons of a Trump aide Steve Witkoff, on conditional basis.
Trump, who hosted crypto executives at the White House this week, earned more than a half-billion dollars from World Liberty Financial in 2025, his disclosure shows.
In a June 23 letter, Senate Democrats demanded the chamber investigate reporting from The Wall Street Journal, published in January, that United Arab Emirates national security officials purchased a financial stake in World Liberty Financial.
“The arrangement ‘marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company,’” the letter said.
Wyden and other senior Democrats reiterated their criticisms in a July 14 letter, based on Trump’s financial disclosures.
“The disclosures heighten concerns about the president pushing Congress to pass crypto legislation in favor of the very industry he’s cashing in on, the Administration’s moves to exempt cryptocurrencies and service providers from existing financial services regulations, and its steps to weaken enforcement” the senators wrote, noting that the Trump administration disbanded a Department of Justice team on crypto enforcement.
‘Stablecoins’ and cash
Legislation to create regulations around “stablecoins,” crypto currency assets linked to currencies like the U.S. dollar, cleared Congress last year.
The majority of New Jersey’s 14 lawmakers who comprise the state’s congressional delegation voted for the bill, called the Genius Act, which Trump signed into law July 18, 2025.
Just Reps. Donald Norcross (D-1st), Frank Pallone (D-6th), LaMonica McIver (D-10th) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) voted against the legislation, which passed the House 308-122 and the Senate 68-30, after amendments were adopted.
“Regulating financial markets has been a challenging task for generations,” Norcross said in a statement Thursday to NJ Spotlight News. “For something as relatively recent and evolving as crypto, I think Congress should take its time to ensure new rules aren’t allowing loopholes for fraud and corruption.”
The House voted 294-134 to pass the bill now stalled in the Senate. That bill, which has industry support, would give the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission a primary role regulating cryptocurrency while assigning some SEC authority “over primary market crypto transactions,” according to a summary from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Cryptocurrency companies have lobbied for years to be regulated by the relatively obscure commodities and futures board, a “much smaller, less well-resourced agency with a much narrower investor protection mandate” than the SEC, according to Mark Hays, associate director of two advocacy groups called Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress, who spoke to NJ Spotlight News in a 2024 interview.
NJ senators
Cory Booker of New Jersey, in a statement with fellow Senate Democrats, said the pending bill “falls short.”
“Key provisions including those addressing ethics for elected officials, consumer protection, illicit finance, conflicts of interest and market integrity must be strengthened,” the statement reads.
A Booker spokeswoman on Thursday referred NJ Spotlight News to comments the senator made this month that the bill could pass with added language about ethics to prevent “a president or anybody else to grift off of their office.”
Asked why Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) voted for the bill that became law, a spokeswoman referenced remarks the senator made when the bill to regulate stablecoins passed in 2025.
Kim pushed for sections in the bill, now law, to curb illicit financial transactions such as money laundering for drugs and terrorist groups. “I voted yes after working directly with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to secure specific provisions about serious national security concerns not addressed in earlier bill versions,” Kim said after passage.
The industry poured money into congressional races in the 2024 campaign cycle, boosting allies and targeting critics. Crypto-linked super PACs, political committees legally allowed to spend unlimited sums on federal politics, spent about $232,000 to reelect Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) in 2024.
“While these bipartisan bills aren’t perfect, we need clear rules of the road to crack down on swindlers preying on Jersey investors. The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts deliver critical consumer protections and ensure that America — not other nations — leads the way,” Gottheimer said in an statement to NJ Spotlight News on Thursday. The Clarity Act is the political name for the bill stuck in the Senate.
Protect Progress
For the 2026 midterms, the crypto lobby is spending heavily again.
One such super PAC spent $215,063 on Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th) in the last congressional cycle. This cycle the same super PAC, called Protect Progress, has so far spent $262,965.24 to reelect Menendez, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures.
Spokespeople for Menendez did not reply to a request for comment about the super PAC’s support.
Foris Dax Inc., the parent company of Crypto.com, a financial exchange for digital currencies, has donated $35 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supports Trump, federal records show.
At least 11 cryptocurrency executives met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, according to pool reports.
“We’re ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader not only in Bitcoin and crypto, but also technologies like prediction markets,” said Trump, adding that his administration has considered stockpiling crypto assets. “Certainly, it’s been talked about.”
Addressing reporters, Trump added, “One year ago this summer, I signed landmark legislation known as The Genius Act. I named it after myself.”
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