How the Genius Act Could Transform the Crypto Landscape

The 6830 vote on the Genius Act marks the first time the Senate has passed major legislation to regulate digital assets.

Now stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle already hold nearly $200 billion in short-term treasuries.

Some say that that could double or top $1 trillion in two years.

The upside while more demand for T bills could mean lower borrowing costs for the government and consumers, but not everyone is convinced.

While joining the ads stablecoins are moving center stage.

Is John Motel, head of Americas atEICO.

John, happy Friday.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Remy.

Well, of course all focus was on the Genius Act, and now it does move to the House.

So in terms of innovation, what are the next steps here and what does this mean for the landscape?

So I am not a poli sci major, but it needs to go through the House, and I believe they have their own bill outstanding right now that could be passed, but it looks like the Genius Act should follow through or follow through.

I was actually down in DC this past week and I was there for other reasons for research and um for educational purposes, but the Genius Act did dominate the majority of the sessions down there and in terms of innovation.

This could create more market clarity and more entrance to the crypto space because USGC will be a great settlement piece as you can see that it will more transactions will come to market as a result of these stablecoin transactions.

And speaking of stablecoins, it was only a few weeks ago that we had Circle go public here at the New York Stock Exchange and Since then we've seen the price of that stock skyrocket, so we've seen not just a double digit percentage gain, but also a triple.

So where do you go from here and what do you make of the valuation and where the price of the stock is?

Well, the stock will grow exponentially as the adoption of stablecoins increase, and especially with the passage of the passing of the Genius Act we'll see growing adoption of these stablecoins that are covered under US regulations.

So if you look on a few charts, you'll see that stablecoin pairs to USDC are growing exponentially over the past few years.

We expect that to grow more and more over the next couple of years, especially as more tokenized securities come to the market.

So on your screen you can see.

There's 908 total spot pairs and 89 perpetual pairs that are trading against USTC right now.

The perpetual market is another interesting piece where we are seeing extra focus by the CFTC.

There's a bill being passed right now or request for comment for perpetual or 24 hour training.

And on your screen you also see on chain transactions are growing significantly, but I really like this chart because it also showed cases some of the major events that occurred over the past couple of years, such as SVB, the FTX bankruptcy, as well as the Tera Luna collapse, where these highlight also some of the risks associated with on-chain transactions where Could be potential DPEG.

So this drew light to regulation and so with the regulation, people are feeling a little bit more confident about these these on chain stable coins.

Yeah, and John, you just gave us an overview of what we've seen across the crypto landscape over the course of the past several years.

So as we move forward and as we keep a close eye on.

I know you just mentioned perps right now, but give us an overview of what it means for retail investors out there.

Retail investors growing, growing activity.

Retail investors will have access to more and more trading strategies, especially with like perpetual futures.

It's a more unique approach that not everybody's familiar with.

I just warn that we should be careful with what we're investing in, but growing demand and stable coins will just create more global, global acceptance of cryptocurrency trading.

And ever since Circle was public, we've been hearing more about stablecoin.

So how could stablecoin market action actually affect what's happening in treasury?

So in treasuries.

That is one, so one of the parts of the Genius Act is that there needs to be a 1 to 1 holdings in the treasury of these stablecoins so it can be cash or cash equivalent, and one of those is US Treasury.

So there will be growing demand for US Treasuries for these treasuries of these stablecoin issuers, and as more issuers come to the market, there might be greater demand for these US treasurers.

And John, finally, before I let you go, I do want to ask you about what we've been seeing in the crypto major Bitcoin.

So we are off all-time highs and we are hovering right below the 106,000 level on this Friday morning.

But given all the inflows, the multi-billion dollar inflows we've been seeing in ETFs, why is the crypto major itself not rallying?

Well, Just typical price action.

I don't like to speculate on what the price will be.

I let the professionals do that, but in terms of what we can expect, I think we'll just see growing adoption, especially as more more acceptance, regulatory clarity comes in DC.

One of the things I'm tracking is with the passing of the Genius Act, we should see more.

More bills come come to law around market structure and as we get more guidance around market structure clarity, then you'll see more adoption in Bitcoin as well.

Well, we have about 30 seconds here, John.

So as we head into the second half of 2025, there are a lot of factors whether we're talking about macro geopolitics that could potentially affect the crypto landscape.

The major catalyst that you're paying attention to.

Well, so everybody's been tracking the ETF approval.

So once we see more acceptance of staking ETFs, multi-asset ETFs, multi-asset indices, we'll see growing adoption for the US market because this is the language that the US understands and the market understands globally.

I would also like to stress again that with the passing of the Genius Act, it up the Senate and the Congress to pass more legislation around market structure.

Market structure clarity will be the catalyst for growth in this space.

We saw it happen in Europe at a certain scale, but once it passes in the US, it's to the races in my opinion.

OK, John, well, great to have you back here at the New York Stock Exchange, as always.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your perspectives.

Thank you for having me.