In brief
- House Democrats prevented a crypto-focused hearing from proceeding Tuesday in protest of President Trump’s crypto ventures.
- Rep. Maxine Waters, who led the walk out, said its purpose was to add language to crypto bills preventing the president from profiting from the sector while in office.
- The dramatic standoff highlights how escalating tensions are threatening fragile bipartisan support for pending crypto legislation.
House Democrats staged a walkout of a digital assets-focused hearing on Tuesday, with party leadership threatening that President Donald Trump’s personal crypto ventures could derail bipartisan support of pending crypto legislation.
House Financial Services Committee ranking member Maxine Waters (D-CA) led the charge, objecting at the outset to the hearing’s convening. A dramatic scene then ensued, with Democrats including Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) yelling out a list of crypto-related profits the president has reaped while in office, and House Republicans shouting over them to stop.
“President Trump’s crypto dealings are estimated to be a total of $2.9 billion and nearly 40% of his total wealth!” Lynch exclaimed, as Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) demanded the representative stop speaking.
“The gentleman is no longer recognized!” Steil repeated several times, before order was called in the room.
Several Democrats, led by Waters, then walked out to convene a separate roundtable across the street, centered on “Trump’s crypto corruption.”
Moments before the walkout, Waters told Decrypt that the objective of the stunt was to force language into pending stablecoin and market structure bills that would prevent the president from engaging in crypto ventures while in office. Last month, House Democrats proposed several amendments along those lines—but the Financial Services Committee’s Republican majority shot down each of them.
“We came close to getting a stablecoin bill, but Trump has been so outrageously brazen with his ownership of a crypto company, a stablecoin,” Waters told Decrypt. “Enriching himself and his family, coaxing investors by bringing them to the White House. It’s just too much.”
Yesterday, Trump announced that in addition to hosting a dinner later this month at his Washington-area golf club for the top 220 holders of his meme coin, he will also offer the token’s top 25 holders a private reception and a White House tour. In recent days, American companies have begun buying up millions of dollars worth of the token, which trades under the TRUMP ticker, in the hopes of scoring a chance to lobby the president face-to-face.
Last week at a crypto conference in Dubai, the president’s sons revealed a $2 billion deal backed by the UAE government that will involve the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, and its stablecoin, USD1. The announcement sparked an uproar among Democrats.
Today’s hearing was initially supposed to focus on a newly revealed draft of the House’s market structure bill, which would create a framework for U.S. regulation of most digital assets. The bill, in its latest form, would end SEC oversight of most top crypto tokens.
After the Democrats’ flashy walk out this morning, the meeting then shifted to a more informal roundtable, with crypto industry leaders and former regulators testifying and answering questions about industry regulation to a thinner panel of mostly Republicans.
Greg Tusar, Coinbase’s head of institutional product and one of the roundtable’s participants, spoke positively of the new market structure draft when asked to share his thoughts.
“It is a strong step,” he said.
Midway through the roundtable, Rep. Steil, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, admonished Democrats for leaving the event, and argued they were preventing needed regulation from passing.
“I think the danger we have in this country is if we put our head in the sand and fail to regulate in this space, we actually have more risk than we do today,” he said.
Rep. Stephen Lynch and a handful of Democrats remained at the main roundtable for some time in order to continue voicing their opinions.
“Brick by brick, President Trump is showing us how democracies die,” Lynch said during the session. The Democrat then warned roundtable participants that the president’s crypto dealings were doing their industry no favors.
“You want to have credibility. You want to have trust,” he said. “And I don’t think you’re getting that from [Trump’s crypto deals].”
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