Regulatory update: GENIUS Act passes Senate, CLARITY Act advances out of House committees

Editor’s note: Our Regulatory Updates series highlights the latest regulatory, legal, and policy happenings relevant to the crypto industry, curated by the a16z crypto regulatory team.

Regulatory news: May 30 – June 17, 2025

tl;dr

• The Senate passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act in a bipartisan vote of 68 in favor and 30 in opposition. The bill is the first major digital assets legislation to clear the Senate and would establish the first-ever regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. The House of Representatives will now consider the legislation.
• The House Committee on Agriculture advanced out of committee the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a bill that would establish a digital asset market structure framework, with 47 votes in favor and 6 in opposition. The House Financial Services Committee also advanced the bill out of committee with 32 votes in favor and 19 in opposition.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Crypto Task Force held its fifth roundtable, focusing on decentralized finance. SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins and Commissioners Mark T. Uyeda, Caroline A. Crenshaw, and Hester M. Peirce gave opening remarks.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

• Acting Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Caroline D. Pham discussed the responses that the CFTC staff had received to their consultations on 24/7 markets and perpetual derivatives in regard to crypto asset products.
• A federal court ordered My Big Coin Pay, Inc. and My Big Coin, Inc., as well as two men, to pay a more than $19 million civil monetary penalty and $6 million in restitution to defrauded victims in connection with their role in a digital asset fraud scheme.

Congress

• As mentioned in “tl;dr,” the Senate passed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act in a bipartisan vote of 68 in favor and 30 in opposition. The bill is the first major digital assets legislation to clear the Senate and would establish the first-ever regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. The House of Representatives will now consider the legislation.
• As mentioned in “tl;dr,” the House Committee on Agriculture advanced out of committee the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a bill that would establish a digital asset market structure framework, with 47 votes in favor and 6 in opposition. The House Financial Services Committee also advanced the bill out of committee with 32 votes in favor and 19 in opposition.
• House Representative William R. Timmons (R-S.C.) sent a letter to SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins, requesting specific documents relating to the SEC’s historical views on the status of Ether and the application of the securities laws to it.
• Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting information about Meta’s plans and deliberations on pursuing a stablecoin venture.

Department of Justice

• The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil forfeiture complaint relating to more than $7.74 million tied to an alleged scheme involving North Korean information technology workers obtaining illegal employment and earning millions in cryptocurrency for the benefit of the North Korean government in order to evade U.S. sanctions placed on North Korea.
• The DOJ seized approximately 145 darknet and traditional internet domains, and cryptocurrency funds associated with the BidenCash marketplace. The BidenCash operators had allegedly used the platform to simplify the process of buying and selling stolen credit cards and associated personal information.
• The DOJ charged a resident of New York and citizen of Russia with various offenses related to using his cryptocurrency company Evita to funnel more than $500 million of overseas payments through U.S. banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, while hiding the source and purpose of the transactions.
• Five men pleaded guilty for their roles in laundering more than $36.9 million from victims of an international digital asset investment scam conspiracy that was carried out from scam centers in Cambodia.
• Cryptocurrency financial services firm “Gotbit” was sentenced for criminal charges relating to its fraudulent manipulation of cryptocurrency trading volume on behalf of client cryptocurrency companies and ordered to forfeit a total of approximately $23 million in seized cryptocurrency. Gotbit’s founder was sentenced to eight months in prison and one year of supervised release.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an announcement to inform individuals about cyber criminals defrauding cryptocurrency users through the nonfungible token airdrop feature embedded in non-custodial wallets, which is disguised as free rewards or incentives for Hedera Hashgraph network users.

Department of the Treasury

• The Internal Revenue Service issued Notice 2025-33 extending and modifying transition relief that was previously provided for brokers who are required to file Form 1099-DA to report certain digital asset sale and exchange transactions by customers.
• The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams, which are commonly known as “pig butchering.”
• In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that stablecoin legislation backed by U.S. treasuries will create a market that will expand U.S. dollar usage all around the world.

Securities and Exchange Commission

• As mentioned in “tl;dr,” the SEC’s Crypto Task Force held its fifth roundtable, focusing on decentralized finance. SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins and Commissioners Mark T. Uyeda, Caroline A. Crenshaw, and Hester M. Peirce gave opening remarks.
• The SEC formally withdrew 14 proposed rules that it had issued under former chair Gary Gensler, which included a rule that would have expanded the definition of “exchange” to include decentralized finance protocols, as well as a rule that would have made it more challenging for investment advisers to custody crypto assets. House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) commended the SEC’s decision.
• In testimony before the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins said that a key priority of his Chairmanship will be “to develop a rational regulatory framework for crypto asset markets that establishes clear rules of the road for the issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets while continuing to discourage bad actors from violating the law.”
• Commissioner Hester M. Peirce said that the SEC is working on providing clarity on how investment advisers and investment companies can hold digital assets in compliance with the current custody requirements, among other things.
• In a public statement, Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw criticized what she described as “opportunistic—and deeply inconsistent—legal interpretations” of the securities status of certain crypto assets.
• A federal judge ordered a Georgia man to pay more than $1.1 million in penalties after he failed to defend himself against SEC allegations that he ran an affinity fraud scheme in which he raised at least $800,000 from as many as 200 investors through the sale of “Stemy Coin,” a purported crypto asset.
• The SEC delayed its decisions on the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF, Grayscale Hedera Trust, and the VanEck Avalanche ETF.

State

Connecticut

• Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation that bars the state and political subdivisions of the state from purchasing, holding, investing in, or establishing a reserve of virtual currency. The governor must sign the legislation for it to go into effect.

Illinois

• Illinois lawmakers passed the Digital Assets Consumer Protection Act, which would establish a registration regime for digital asset exchanges and other digital asset businesses in Illinois, as well as the Virtual Currency Kiosk Act, which establishes registration requirements for kiosk operators and other consumer protections. The governor must sign the bills for them to go into effect.

New York

• New York Comptroller Brad Lander said that New York City would “not be issuing any Bitcoin-backed bonds on [his] watch,” and that cryptocurrencies are “not sufficiently stable” to finance the city’s infrastructure, affordable housing, or schools.
• MoonPay announced that the New York Department of Financial Services had granted MoonPay USA LLC its BitLicense and Money Transmitter license.

International

Australia

• The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre placed new operating conditions, including transaction limits, on Australian crypto ATM providers.

European Union

• European Central Bank policymaker and Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta said that the risks stemming from the cryptoasset sector have to be “monitored carefully, especially the reputational risks linked to the provision of cryptoassets by banks,” and that the digital euro project could help contain those risks.

Financial Stability Board

• In his last address as chair of the Financial Stability Board, President of De Nederlandsche Bank Klaas Knot said that “crypto does not yet pose a systemic risk” but recent developments suggest it might be “reaching a tipping point” as its interlinkages with the traditional financial system continue to grow.

France

• French prosecutors charged 25 suspects aged between 16 and 23 years old in relation to recent violent attacks that have targeted figures in the crypto ecosystem and their families.

United Kingdom

• The Financial Conduct Authority is proposing to lift the ban on offering crypto exchange traded notes (cETNs) to retail investors.

Vietnam

• Vietnam’s National Assembly passed a law that establishes a legal framework for crypto regulation and recognizes cryptocurrencies as property under civil law.

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