Stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, tokenization…there’s been a lot of new ideas thrown around when it comes to how cryptocurrency can reach the mainstream market.
To break it all down, Brew Markets spoke to Beth Haddock, the global policy lead at Stablecoin Standard who has worked in the crypto and fintech fields for years.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The GENIUS Act just passed in the Senate. What do you think are the biggest takeaways in terms of industry growth?
We are filling a gap. It’s just not OK that you have USDC, which is now a publicly traded company with Circle, and we don’t have stablecoin legislation.
One of the benefits of the GENIUS Act being passed now, instead of last year or the year before, is that we can look at what Hong Kong and other jurisdictions have done, and we can do a better job. I’m very optimistic about the GENIUS Act, and I think it’s going to solidify what I call responsible innovation.
What do you think of criticism that the GENIUS Act doesn't do enough to address investor protections from stuff like meme coins and scams?
We have tons of laws that apply if you defraud someone using crypto, I don’t think it needs to be baked into the GENIUS Act more so than it is. Crime is pervasive in financial services, so we need guardrails, and there is plenty in the [GENIUS Act] for consumer protection, commensurate with Asia and Europe’s stablecoin regulation. I think the real issue is that you may have legislators who don’t understand the technology.
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How can crypto address scam/meme coin culture at large?
I always think there’s more work to be done. I do think that you’ll see a continued effort to build up credibility, and with the guardrails you’ll see that, too. Even in traditional finance, you think about many of the names that people get mortgages from and had bank accounts with have been part of scams and had different enforcement actions, so it's also a culture issue.
Broadening out beyond just stablecoins, why do you think many on Wall Street (aka “TradFi”) seem to be warming up to crypto all of a sudden, after years of criticisms?
What was going on behind the scenes was not intellectually honest with some of their public statements—a lot of traditional finance firms had digital asset groups already.
The pivot point was the approval of bitcoin ETFs [in January 2024], and the second pivot point is now stablecoins. Stablecoins may be the kind of boring infrastructure and the rails, but if we can agree on a responsible architecture, then everyone feels more informed about building on top.—LB