Trump: The President is very angry; it must pass tomorrow!
Written by: Bright, Foresight News
On July 16, Beijing time, according to Politico reporters, the procedural vote in the House of Representatives on cryptocurrency-related bills failed to pass. According to Fox News, the House of Representatives plans to attempt to vote again on the legislative rules for cryptocurrency-related bills at around 17:00 Eastern Time (05:00 Beijing time).
Reports indicate that President Trump was very 'angry' after being slapped in the face. After the House vote failed, Trump immediately posted that the GENIUS Act would pass tomorrow, stating that he had met with 11 dissenting congressmen in the Oval Office today to discuss passing the 'GENIUS Act' and received unanimous consent to support the rule the next morning.
However, the Democratic Party whip in the United States subsequently stated that there were no additional plans for cryptocurrency bill votes in the House today. This vote ended with 196 votes in favor vs. 222 votes against, resulting in three cryptocurrency bills, including stablecoin regulations, and the defense spending bill failing to enter the formal review stage. The cryptocurrency bills included are primarily:
GENIUS Act (Stablecoin Regulations)
CLARITY Act (Regulation of Digital Asset Market Structure)
Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act (Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act)
House Speaker Johnson could only awkwardly state that he hoped to try again on Wednesday to conduct a procedural vote on the cryptocurrency bills in the House.
The aggressive Trump administration
Since the GENIUS Act passed the Senate on June 18, Trump immediately expressed his hope to see the bill on his desk before the Congressional recess in August. Market news also unanimously believes that the House's vote on the GENIUS Act was merely a 'formality,' and its formal passage is a foregone conclusion.
Before the House conducted a 'procedural vote' on the GENIUS Act, Trump had already posted on social media 'opening champagne,' stating: 'Happy Crypto Week. The House is about to vote on a significant bill, the GENIUS Act, which aims to make the United States the undisputed leader in the digital asset field. Digital assets represent the future, and the United States is far ahead. Let's complete the first vote this afternoon (all Republicans should vote in favor). This is our moment. All of this is to make America great again, stronger and more excellent than ever before. We are leading the world and will work with the Senate and the House to push for more relevant legislation to be passed.'
Why was there such a 'slap in the face'? CBDC is actually the original sin.
However, the reason the House did not complete a series of cryptocurrency bill voting plans according to script may be that the GENIUS stablecoin bill is not the center of the conflict. Before the meeting, David Sacks, the White House AI and cryptocurrency director, made a sudden statement that is indeed noteworthy. He explicitly stated that the Trump administration plans to prohibit the issuance of central bank digital currency (CBDC).
It is evident that the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act may be the real battleground for the two parties.
The Republican and Democratic parties have long been at odds over the issue of CBDC, with the Biden administration very committed to promoting CBDC. In March 2022, Biden signed Executive Order 14067: (Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets), placing the research and development work for designing and deploying CBDC as a top priority. In March 2023, Nellie Liang, the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, announced in a speech at the Atlantic Council that the Treasury would convene a cross-departmental working group to explore the development of CBDC, allowing the United States to 'quickly move forward when determining that CBDC aligns with national interests.'
To enhance the status of CBDC, the Biden administration did not hesitate to suppress cryptocurrencies. In March of the same year, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released its annual report, with an entire chapter dedicated to discussing digital assets. The report positioned CBDC and the FedNow payment system launched by the Federal Reserve as more promising pathways to enhance currency and finance, and expressed a viewpoint of suppressing cryptocurrencies, arguing that cryptocurrencies have almost no value beyond speculation risks. This report subsequently became the ideological cornerstone of the Biden administration's continued high pressure on the crypto industry.
The camp staunchly opposing CBDC is filled with mainstream Republicans, Silicon Valley libertarians, anti-establishment leftists, and cryptocurrency practitioners, all united in their opposition to CBDC out of concern for privacy and government control. By the end of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party's vision for CBDC has basically failed. The (Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act) was passed in the House of Representatives in May 2024, at which time the Senate had not yet voted. The bill explicitly prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly or indirectly to the public through intermediaries, and it cannot be used for open market operations or any monetary policy tools, nor can any form of CBDC testing be conducted.
As expected, on January 23, 2025, newly inaugurated President Trump immediately signed an executive order banning any institution from issuing or using central bank digital currency (CBDC) within or outside the United States, while relaxing regulations on privately issued digital currencies and establishing a digital asset market working group led by the U.S. President, which later became the White House AI and cryptocurrency working group chaired by David Sacks.
Thus, the anti-CBDC bill is essentially the pre-legalization source for the Trump administration's promotion of the GENUIS and other cryptocurrency bills. The failure of these three substantial cryptocurrency bills to pass is fundamentally a struggle between the mainstream CBDC establishment of Democrats and the mainstream cryptocurrency faction of Republicans.
However, from a social perspective, CBDC lacks a practical public opinion foundation in the United States. Previous polls showed that only about 16% of Americans expressed support for CBDC, while 78% indicated they were 'unlikely to use it,' with more than half stating they were 'extremely unlikely to use it.'
In this regard, Zhongjin had previously published a research report stating that the (Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act) forms a logical closed loop with the (CLARITY Act) and (GENIUS Act) in the regulatory path for digital currency in the United States. It reflects the strategic choice of the United States: to abandon a government-led CBDC and instead support dollar stablecoins issued by the private sector, implementing policy guidance and regulation over them. Amid the global central banks exploring CBDC, this move highlights the differentiated path of traditional Republicans based on the 'small government, big market' concept. In the long term, dollar stablecoins and CBDCs issued by various central banks will form a competitive relationship, representing a new competition between the market and government in the innovation arena.
