Transcription
About a week ago, President Donald Trump signed the Genius Act, an American federal law dedicated to version 3.0 of the dollar, stablecoins. A decision that pushed the entire crypto market beyond 4,000 billion dollars in market cap for the very first time in its history. After months of political battle, its adoption by the Senate last June then the House of Representatives, it is now official. The Genius Act will come into effect in the coming months and this text could well change everything, at least for the United States. But this is not the only news from last week. If the question around Bitcoin was already addressed with its status as a commodity, therefore a recognized raw material, and that of stablecoins now seems settled as well thanks to the Genius Act, a big piece remained. The elephant in the room, in this case all other cryptos. How does the American regulator intend to treat the thousands of tokens in the ecosystem and especially all the infrastructures that allow them to be used and exchanged? LC enters the scene with another major text, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, nicknamed the Clarity Act. A text that aims to define once and for all what a digital asset is. 2025 is becoming a pivotal year in the history of crypto regulation in the United States, and what is at stake could inspire the rest of the world. For over 10 years, the crypto sector has been paralyzed or at least significantly slowed down. Endless lawsuits between the SEC and industry giants. Barely veiled threats of repression. Dubious political initiatives aimed at slowing down or even stifling an entire sector. Legal and regulatory insecurity that has pushed dozens of projects to flee to Dubai, Singapore, or the Cayman Islands. And then suddenly, everything changes, everything accelerates. I think you all know this phrase. There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. We are probably witnessing this kind of week right now. Three laws were passed in the House of Representatives. One of them has already been signed by President Donald Trump, and a potentially explosive executive order is reportedly in preparation. The United States is in the process of redesigning its relationship with the crypto ecosystem, with this new technology, piece by piece. We'll review all these changes in this GAB video. Let's go. The first level of this new regulatory architecture in the United States is the Genius Act, as we said in the introduction of this video. A federal law that elevates stablecoins to the institutional level. A legal framework, in theory clear, that imposes strict requirements on issuers regarding reserves and the transparency of their model, paving the way for large-scale institutional adoption. While in Europe, people are wondering if this new regulation will, I quote, "weaken the American economy," Trump himself asserts the opposite. He says this law strengthens the dollar's power and, more broadly, it's an excellent thing for the country. If you follow this channel, this reasoning should not surprise you. We have repeated it many times in our videos. Stablecoin issuers are a goldmine for the American government seeking financing, which sees them as reliable and regular buyers of Treasury bonds. In January 2025 alone, Tether and Circle, the issuers of USDT and USDC, held more US Treasury bonds together than Germany. Over the entire year 2024, Tether, which by the way is one of the most profitable companies in the world, ranked as the 7th largest buyer of US public debt, across all actors. It's just monstrous. And this is only the beginning, because what probably interests the Trump administration the most are the projections being made. By 2030, stablecoin issuers could become the world's largest holders of Treasury bonds, ahead of China, ahead of Japan, ahead of any other country in the world. So, concretely, what does this law change? From now on, stablecoin issuers will have to guarantee their reserves exclusively in dollars, short-term Treasury bonds, or liquid equivalents. We also learn that reserves cannot be re-hypothecated. Basically, if a stablecoin is backed by $100 million in Treasury bond reserves, these Treasury bonds cannot be used for other purposes. So, no double usage, no hidden leverage. The Genius Act requires stablecoin issuers to publish monthly reports detailing the exact composition of their reserves, and these reports must be audited by a third party. And for stablecoins whose supply exceeds 50 billion, which we could define as "too big to fail," a full report to the American regulator each year. And of course, a fundamental element, these stablecoins must be exchangeable at any time, one-to-one against the underlying asset, namely the dollars that guarantee them. The text also settles the question of jurisdiction. Stablecoins will not be considered securities, nor commodities. Therefore, neither the SEC nor the CFTC can regulate them directly. They fall under the supervision of traditional banking authorities, namely the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), which regulates national banks, the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) responsible for deposit insurance and bank supervision, the Federal Reserve, which supervises large banking institutions and defines monetary policy, and the NCUA (National Credit Union Administration), which regulates credit unions. In short, stablecoins are no longer on the margins of the system; they are becoming an official, regulated, and recognized component of it. You may have noticed that the official text does not speak of stablecoins, but of stablecoin payments. What needs to be understood is that this law only concerns stablecoins backed by fiat currencies or government securities. In other words, stablecoins issued in a decentralized manner, like DAI for example, or GO, which are backed by other cryptos, remain outside the scope, at least for now. And it's even logical for DeFi and decentralized finance. The Genius Act regulates issuers, custodians, and financial intermediaries but does not apply to decentralized protocols like Uniswap or Curve. These platforms do allow the exchange of USDT or USDC, but they are neither issuers nor custodians of user funds. They therefore remain outside the scope of this law. While the Genius Act has been adopted, it has not yet entered into force. Two scenarios are planned. Either the law will apply 18 months after its promulgation, i.e., January 18, 2027, or 120 days after the regulators have published the implementing rules. So, barring any surprises, we can expect a concrete entry into force in early 2027. One of the major concerns mentioned regarding the Genius Act concerns the level of guarantee offered to stablecoin holders. Holding US dollars in a bank account means benefiting from protection, in theory at least, explicitly, notably through federal FDIC insurance up to $250,000. But as soon as you exchange these dollars for a stablecoin like USDC, for example, these guarantees disappear, and the government wants to make that very clear. In an official statement, the White House prohibits stablecoin issuers from any marketing communication that suggests their token is, in any way, insured by the FDIC. That said, the Genius Act provides a safety net for users of these stablecoins. In case of the bankruptcy of an issuer, for example Tether or Circle, holders of the stablecoin in question become owners of the company's assets before any other creditor. This logic, known as "first in line," marks progress but does not replace public guarantee. Obviously, stablecoins, particularly USDT and USDC, the two giants of the sector, represent a real revolution for emerging countries in recent years, and this movement is only accelerating. In developed countries, all it takes is a smartphone with an app like Revolut or a neobank to switch from one currency to another, make an international transfer or purchase in a few clicks. But in a large part of the world, the reality is quite different. In emerging countries, access to the banking system remains extremely limited. According to the World Bank, nearly 1.4 billion people worldwide still do not have a bank account. These people still live primarily with cash in unstable local currencies and have no simple, fast, or secure way to access the dollar, which is still considered globally as the least bad of fiat currencies. With a simple smartphone, stablecoins change everything. No need for an address, an ID card, KYC procedures, etc. You download a crypto wallet in 15 seconds on your phone, you get a receiving address, and you can receive USDC or USDT. The process took literally 2 minutes. This allows absolutely anyone to store, receive, or send digital dollars without going through a bank. It's an unprecedented opportunity for these 1.4 billion people to participate, at their scale, in the global economy. Stablecoins are, for example, flooding South America. This article talks about Brazil and Argentina, but it's the same in many so-called emerging countries. Wherever local currencies are unstable and inflation is rampant, accessing dollars has always been a challenge. Banking restrictions, capital controls, and the lack of modern financial infrastructure prevented a large part of the population from saving or transacting in dollars. Today, thanks to stablecoins and with a simple smartphone, hundreds of millions of people can now, as I said, store, send, and receive digital dollars in seconds without going through any bank. This democratizes access to the dollar on a global scale. The Trump administration has understood this very well. Stablecoins are not a threat to the dollar; they are perhaps one of the biggest opportunities for the dollar since the implementation of the petrodollar system. Beyond the Genius Act, another text is shaking up crypto regulation in the United States. The Clarity Act was adopted on July 17 by the House of Representatives with 294 votes to 134. It aims for an ambitious objective: to bring order to the regulatory chaos that still surrounds thousands of cryptos today. So, a quick reminder for those who do not follow American politics on a daily basis. The House of Representatives is one of the two main bodies of Congress, along with the Senate. Basically, it's the equivalent of the National Assembly in France. So, as we said, the Clarity Act has been approved by the House of Representatives and must now go before the Senate. But before going further, we must measure the scope of the undertaking that this legislation intends to tackle. For years, the dream of crypto projects, particularly in the United States, was to be classified as a security, in other words, a financial security, and thus fall under the purview of the SEC with all that that implies: paperwork, registration, audits, all the associated fees, but also restrictions on the investors you can contact, and so on. In short, it's Wall Street without Wall Street's resources. And here again, a quick reminder, a security is a financial instrument that represents a participation or a debt, like a stock or a bond. A commodity, on the other hand, is a fungible good like gold, oil, or Bitcoin. And in this case, it's no longer the SEC that regulates, but the CFTC that is competent. And to know whether an asset is a security or not, we rely, or rather we relied, on the test dating back to the 1950s, which sets four criteria: an investment of money in a common enterprise with an expectation of profits to be derived solely from the efforts of others. Well, if we look at things realistically, a large number of crypto projects objectively fell into the category of securities. This is precisely where the Clarity Act comes in: to define once and for all which crypto falls under which regulation. The first thing we can take away from this text is that tokens considered sufficiently decentralized will be considered digital commodities falling under the CFTC and not the SEC. Well, that's great, but it raises more questions than it answers because we always come back to the same enigma: who defines what decentralization is? Who decides if a crypto is decentralized or not? So, before going further, we need to understand why a truly decentralized crypto cannot logically be considered a security. In fact, if a crypto project is truly decentralized, there is no identifiable entity on which the project's performance depends. In other words, there is no promise of profit based on the involvement of a third party, which invalidates one of the key criteria of the test. The Clarity Act provides or attempts to provide an answer by introducing a new concept: that of Mature Blockchain Systems. A blockchain network qualified as mature, and therefore by extension, the tokens existing on its network, would be deemed sufficiently decentralized and would then fall into the category of digital commodities under the CFTC's jurisdiction. But here, you will surely ask yourselves, what exactly is a mature blockchain? Well, according to the text, it is a blockchain, and therefore the associated token, that is not controlled by one person or a small group of people. Basically, to be mature, the system must be impartial. No person or group of people should be able to modify the functioning or the rules of the network, unless the modification is adopted according to a decentralized consensus. Well, we are certainly making progress, but it still remains very theoretical. The bill specifies that a blockchain is considered mature and therefore decentralized if no person or group holds more than 20% of the token's supply, voting power, nodes, or system validators. And this directly or indirectly. Another criterion that makes sense: the code must be open source, and any entity can come and certify to the SEC that the blockchain in question meets these conditions and therefore constitutes a mature, hence decentralized, blockchain. But that's not all. The value of the token, its appreciation, must essentially come from the use of the technology, its adoption, and not from an external promise or a centralized actor. Frankly, for me, this part remains very vague. And the 20% threshold is the same because, in reality, in a DAO for example, one can delegate their voting rights or their tokens to a service provider. So how do we manage that? On this point, the text is more or less clear. A DAO, referred to here as a decentralized governance system, is not considered a small group of people. In other words, a collective governance cannot be disqualified just because certain delegates concentrate more power. And finally, the last point that has long been a blocking issue is the sharing of revenue from the network or the crypto application in question. Until now in the United States, a crypto project that redistributed part of its revenue to its token holders took a huge legal risk because in the eyes of the SEC, it was seen as being a security. It was very similar to owning a stock and paying dividends to its shareholders. It had also caused a lot of buzz when the decentralized finance application Uniswap considered activating the fee switch, i.e., revenue sharing through its UNI token. The Clarity Act seems to finally clarify things. Yes, the distribution of revenue in one form or another classifies the asset as a security, unless this distribution of revenue is done within the framework of a decentralized governance system. As for tokens that are not, or not yet, attached to a mature blockchain and are sold as part of an investment contract, which was essentially the case with ICOs a few years ago, they will henceforth be considered financial assets. In other words, things are now clear: if there is an expectation of profit linked to the involvement or efforts of a central team, these tokens fall under the SEC's jurisdiction. Next, in these texts, it was also necessary to manage all the other actors who make these new technologies work: the nodes, the validators, the oracles, the web interface developers, the crypto wallets, the liquidity providers, all these behind-the-scenes actors without whom no crypto network or application could truly function. On this point, the bill is rather clear: all these services, assimilated here to decentralized finance activities, are excluded from the scope of the Clarity Act. This exclusion of decentralized finance is not surprising. Last June, the chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, himself defended an innovation exemption. A proposal aimed at allowing DeFi projects to launch their products directly on-chain, i.e., on crypto networks, without fearing immediate sanctions as long as a clear regulatory framework has not been established. Basically, let innovation happen without putting too many barriers to entry, and we'll put rules in place later. This Clarity Act still has to pass the Senate, where some Democratic senators denounce deregulation that is considered far too broad, while others worry about the growing influence of crypto lobbies. In short, nothing is set in stone yet, and several points of the text could evolve or even be called into question before potential implementation. The third text, also adopted by the House of Representatives last week, materializes one of Trump's flagship campaign promises: to block CBDCs, Central Bank Digital Currencies. Titled the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, it prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency intended for the general public. Concretely, this new law, much more concise than the Clarity Acts, governmental for citizens, blocks the issuance of a digital dollar issued by the American central bank and even slows down pilot programs related to CBDCs. The stated objective is to protect digital currencies issued by private actors, in other words, stablecoins. And as with the Clarity Act, nothing is guaranteed; the text still has to pass the Senate, and the subject is also highly polarizing. Several Democrats see this as an attempt to stifle innovation, to undermine the Federal Reserve. Bitcoin, stablecoins, decentralized finance. You can see that a revolution is underway. Every month, our team unveils the best opportunities in Finance 3.0: yields, strategies, innovative projects, everything traditional finance will never tell you. You also benefit from an exclusive analysis by Richard on market trends and 24/7 access to our private Discord where our experts assist you in real-time. No more investments pushed by your banker. If you want a real strategic advantage to invest intelligently in the finance of tomorrow, click on the link that appears at the top right of your screen or in the description. We now come to the last point of these regulatory novelties in the United States. According to the Financial Times, President Donald Trump is reportedly about to sign an executive order that would authorize crypto investments within 401(k)s, which are essentially Americans' retirement plans and represent over $9,000 billion. Beyond the Financial Times report, several pieces of evidence suggest that this executive order could indeed see the light of day. Last May, the US Department of Labor (DOL) withdrew its unfavorable warning regarding cryptos. A notable change in tone, especially when we remember that 3 years ago, giants like Fidelity had their introduction of Bitcoin into 401(k)s refused by this same DOL. If such an executive order were to pass in the coming months, we could witness a new wave of demand for Bitcoin. Because even today, with the existence of Spot Bitcoin ETFs, exposure through retirement savings plans remains relatively complex. It's not impossible, but still far from simple or accessible to everyone. And this would mark another turning point in the market's perception of Bitcoin. It is increasingly less a speculative toy for geeks or teenage traders, but an asset that one patiently accumulates, that one keeps for old age. In short, the very definition of a store of value. Another topic we also saw this week is the idea of eliminating capital gains taxes for crypto transactions, including Bitcoin, up to $600. The objective is to encourage the use of Bitcoin as a means of payment rather than confining it to a purely speculative role or a store of value. Today, every Bitcoin payment, even to buy a coffee, is technically a taxable event. In theory, one must calculate the capital gain or loss compared to the initial purchase price, which makes its daily use completely impractical. Eliminating this tax obligation for small transactions would be a real paradigm shift for Satoshi Nakamoto's invention. In a few weeks, the United States has done more to clarify its relationship with crypto than in the last 15 years. A relatively clear legal framework for stablecoins, a serious attempt to settle the question of decentralized tokens, a clear rejection of CBDCs, and major advances on Bitcoin's status. Of course, a CBDC issued directly by the Fed will probably never see the light of day in the United States. Too much political resistance, too many mass surveillance issues, and it goes against American ideology, at least publicly. I have absolutely no illusions. USDC, and to a lesser extent USDT, will fulfill exactly the same role. They are already centralized digital currencies issued by private entities that fully cooperate with the authorities: data sharing, real-time surveillance, asset freezing upon simple judicial request. The control is already there, simply outsourced. It's exactly the same model we saw with Palantir, officially a private company but entirely at the service of government agencies. Under the guise of efficiency and innovation, we are slowly moving towards a system where every transaction is traceable, freezeable, reversible. In short, the dream of central bankers without the political complexity of an official CBDC. The USA has understood everything again. In Brussels, they are a bit slower to react, but it will come. Faced with these centralized digital currencies, whether they are labeled CBDCs or Compliant Stablecoins, Bitcoin remains in my opinion the only truly neutral, apolitical, and censorship-resistant alternative. A sort of orange beacon in the darkness of an increasingly centralized digitized financial world. And if you want to understand why this monetary revolution is also inseparable from the artificial intelligence revolution that is taking place, I invite you to watch this other GAB video. The link is right here. Just click.