Crypto Lobbyists Urge U.S. Senators to Dodge Distraction in Stablecoin Debate

The U.S. Senate's stablecoin bill is heading back into the final days of floor debate, and the crypto industry's Washington lobbyists are calling for senators to stay focused on the task even as other legislative efforts muscle into the debate.

If the bill clears those potential obstacles and passes this week, it'll mark the first time a major piece of crypto legislation has cleared the Senate.

The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act is the Senate's much-revised effort to regulate the issuers of stablecoins — the steady tokens generally based on the value of a U.S. dollar, such as Tether's USDT$1,0002 and Circle's USDC$0.9998. The bill already cleared the Senate Banking Committee and an earlier floor-vote test with major bipartisan support, though many Democratic critics tied the effort to concerns over President Donald Trump's personal crypto business interests.

"As the bill continues through the amendment process, we respectfully urge lawmakers to remain committed to its central goal: providing a targeted and comprehensive approach to stablecoin oversight," some of the top Washington lobbying groups said in a joint statement on Monday, signed by the leaders of the Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation, DeFi Education Fund and the Digital Chamber.

This marks a first policy engagement from new Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger, who just left her commissioner post at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune had said he'd throw open the final debate on the GENIUS Act open to amendments, and more than 50 of them were delivered. As often happens to legislation with momentum, lawmakers have latched onto the bill in hopes of letting their unrelated efforts ride its coattails to victory. In this case, the senators behind the Credit Card Competition Act that aims to force more competition between card issuers filed to add that as an amendment to the stablecoin legislation.

Policy analysts such as Ian Katz at Capital Alpha Partners give the credit-card initiative very low odds of getting signed into law — 10-15%, Katz said in a Monday research note. His firm had a more optimistic outlook for the GENIUS Act, putting it at "a 60-65% chance of becoming law this year."

While approval in this chamber of Congress represents the most difficult of all the hurdles faced by the legislation, it would still need approval in the House of Representatives, which may have its own ideas on how to approach stablecoins.

Read More: U.S. Stablecoin Bill Approval Could Trigger a Long-Term Crypto Bull Market: Bitwise