Everything You Should Know About the Stablecoin Bill

Our podcast show being released today will focus on S.  919, the Guiding and Establishing  National Innovation for U. S. Stablecoins Act of 2025 or GENIUS Act which was reported out of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee by a bipartisan vote of 18-6. The bill would establish a regime to regulate stablecoins.  Our guest today, Professor Art Wilmarth of George Washington University School of Law, published an op-ed on March 6 in the American Banker in which he wrote that the "..bill would allow stablecoins, which are volatile deposit-like instruments, to be offered to the public without the essential protections provided by federal deposit insurance and other regulatory safeguards regarding banks that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. By placing the federal government's imprimatur on poorly regulated and unstable stablecoins, the …bill would greatly increase the probability that future runs on stablecoins would trigger systemic crises requiring costly federal bailouts to avoid devastating injuries to our financial system and economy." Our podcast show was designed to be of interest to both crypto neophytes and experts. During this podcast, we explore the following issues:            1. What are stablecoins, and what are their present and potential use cases?            2.  How do stablecoins differ from other types of crypto like bitcoin?            3. How many companies issue stablecoins today?  4. What is the total volume in dollars of outstanding stablecoins?  Has it been growing?  Do all stablecoin issuers also issue other types of crypto?            5. Do any banks issue stablecoins?  If not, why not? 6.  Are there any federal or state regulations that apply to stablecoins today?  What about state money transmitter laws?  7.  Do stablecoins provide a better way to improve the speed and reliability of payments compared to other ways of making payments? Do they offer any benefits that are NOT currently offered by tokenized bank deposits and the instant payment and settlement services offered by FedNow and the Clearing House's Real Time Payment Network?  How do stablecoins on public blockchains compare to tokenized deposits held on private electronic bank ledgers, in terms of safety, reliability, and efficiency. 8.   Professor Wilmarth describes a typical stablecoin transaction and the fact that stablecoin issuers often pay interest on stablecoins that are the equivalent of money market mutual funds and way more than banks pay on passbook or statement savings accounts or checking accounts.            9.  How do stablecoin issuers generate revenue? 10.   What are the potential risks of stablecoins, especially if they can be offered by nonbanks and are not covered by federal deposit insurance?  Would they present the same risks as money market funds, which the Fed and Treasury bailed out in 2008 and again in 2020? Have there been any examples of these risks being realized?  Have there been any failures? What happens if a stablecoin issuer fails?  Does bankruptcy law (as amended by the GENIUS Act), provide a feasible process for dealing with failures of stablecoin issuers?  If nonbank stablecoin issuers become large financial institutions and get into serious trouble, would the federal government be able to finance another series of massive bailouts similar to those of 2007-09 and 2020-21 without risking a crisis in the Treasury bond market and/or another surge of inflation? 11.  Will Big Tech firms issuing stablecoins be able to dominate our banking system and economy and would that necessarily be a bad thing? 12. Which firms are likely to be the most significant issuers of stablecoins if nonbanks are allowed to conduct that activity?  If Big Tech firms are allowed to offer stablecoins, could they use stablecoins to offer banking services and eventually dominate the banking industry?  What should we learn from China's experience with Ant Financial Group (Alipay) and Tencent (WeChat Pay), China's two largest Big Tech firms, which became dominant providers of financial services to Chinese consumers and households? 13.  We then discussed the so-called GENIUS ACT which the Senate Banking Committee passed by an 18-6 bipartisan vote on March 13. What are the major features of the Act?            14.  What are your major concerns about the bill? 15. What would the stablecoin market look like if Congress passed the GENIUS Act in the form that it was approved by the Senate Banking Committee? 16.  Should we require all issuers and distributors of stablecoins to be FDIC-insured banks?  Why do you believe that federal banking laws governing FDIC-insured banks provide a far better approach for regulating issuers of stablecoins? [After the recording of this podcast, the bill ran into rough sledding on the floor for a couple of weeks with some Senators, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, raising consumer protection issues similar to those raised by Professor Wilmarth and other Senators raising concerns about President Trump's family substantially benefiting from enactment of the bill. However, on May 19, after negotiations among Senate Democrats and Republicans to amend the Bill to add consumer protections, limits on tech companies issuing stablecoins and ethics standards for special government employees, like Elon Musk, the Bill advanced on a bipartisan procedural vote to prevent filibustering in the Senate, 66-32, making it likely that the Bill will pass the Senate by a super-majority vote. The fate of the Bill in the House is less certain.] Alan Kaplinsky, Senior Counsel and formerly the Chair for 25 years of the Consumer Financial Services, hosted the podcast show.