The institutional adoption of stablecoins is set to be catalysed following the events of the week, as several bills are making headway in the US Congress.
“Crypto Week,” coined by the industry for its potential advancement of crypto legislation, has the potential to mark a new milestone in convergence.
“Historically, when lawmakers advance industry-backed frameworks, institutional sentiment strengthens. We expect capital that was previously sidelined due to regulatory uncertainty to re-enter,” said Jag Kooner, head of derivatives at crypto exchange Bitfinex.
The GENIUS Act on the stablecoin market structure bill gets a final vote this week on the House of Representatives, after passing the Senate.
Stablecoin adoption is already seeing institutional adoption, but as noted by Catherine Gu, head of institutional client solutions at Visa in a recent interview, adoption is still at “0.5 on a scale of 0 to 10.”
GENIUS would set out the first federal regulatory framework tailored to payment stablecoins, further legitimising the stablecoin market.
If passed, the bill will land with US President Donald Trump for final signature before becoming law.
This comes as the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, opposingly cautions against banks issuing stablecoins, proposing a risk to monetary control.
“I would much rather [banks] go down the tokenised deposit streets and say, how do we digitise our money, particularly in payments,” Bailey said in an interview with the Times.
Institutional movement is contingent on regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act, as Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan explained it “will allow us to figure out whether there’s really a business proposition,” confirming the bank’s plans to issue a dollar-pegged stablecoin.
Institutional movement is already visible with the issuances of JPM Coin and Société Générale’s USD CoinVertible.
In addtion, industry leaders such as Julia Demidova, head of digital currencies product and strategy at FIS are suggesting preparations.
“I think everyone is realising, look, this is moving forward, and they need to have a stablecoin strategy,” she said.
