While House Democrats don’t have the same power to block stablecoin legislation that their Senate counterparts did, the process will likely be slow.
The Senate passed its GENIUS stablecoin regulation bill by a 68-to-30 margin, with 18 Democrats voting in favor, sending the bill to the House and marking the crypto industry’s first major legislative win. So, what happens next?
The House of Representatives will now have the opportunity to vote on the bill, amend it, or focus on its own largely, but not entirely, similar STABLE Act, on which it has been working for months.
It’s unlikely to abandon its own work entirely, so it may just try to pass the STABLE Act and then reconcile the two bills in a joint meeting with the GENIUS Act’s Senate counterparts.
That could take some doing, as there are some crucial differences between the bills. The Senate’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, gives most regulatory authority to the Treasury Department. The House’s Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a Better Ledger Economy Act, or STABLE Act, gives pieces of it to the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency — which oversees banks — along with other agencies.
The STABLE Act also allows state regulators to oversee stablecoin issuers, whereas the GENIUS Act limits that oversight to stablecoins with a market capitalization below $10 billion.
So, while the bills are similar, the differences are not minor.
House Battle Looms
The Senate had a very difficult time passing the bill, but that is in part due to the filibuster rules, which require a 60-vote supermajority to close debate on a bill and bring it to the floor for a vote. The House has no such rule, requiring only a simple majority, and the Republicans hold a five-seat majority.
The bill got bogged down in the Senate when Democrats tried to attach an amendment banning Presidents from profiting from cryptocurrency while in office — a finger in the eye of President Donald Trump, whose financial disclosure forms revealed that he made $57 million from his various crypto endeavors in 2024. Senate Democrats were able to pass amendments strengthening financial disclosure requirements for legislative and executive branch members, as well as some additional consumer protections.
“We thought it would be easiest to start with stablecoins,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas this past May. “It has been extremely difficult. I had no idea how hard this was going to be.”
The Republicans in the House have a very small majority of just five seats, but if they can maintain party discipline, they can pass the STABLE or GENIUS Act without any Democrats. And there are signs that many House Democrats will vote against the bill without a similar Trump-focused amendment.
Beyond that, there are numerous ways for House Democrats to slow the passage of either bill by adding amendments and demanding time-consuming committee votes.
So, it’s likely that the House’s consideration of a stablecoin bill will mirror the time-consuming difficulties the GENIUS Act faced in the Senate, although House Democrats don’t have the same leverage as their Senate counterparts to kill it altogether.
