Some Democrats Endorse Bill Allowing Elon Musk to Create His Own Currency

[Passages]

The GENIUS Act is the first pro-crypto bill Republicans want to rush through this Congress. Thanks to industry money, several Democrats are ignoring the bill’s major problems.

by David Dayen

March 10, 2025

The crypto industry spent lavishly to buy a friendly Congress in the 2024 elections, with their donations making up almost half of all corporate donations to PACs last year. They hope this week will begin the return on that investment—with assistance from Senate Democrats.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected this week to mark up the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, a Republican-led bill co-sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the new chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Gillibrand has worked for years to push industry-friendly crypto legislation through Congress, and she may have hit on a winning formula, with a critical mass of Democrats having received millions from crypto PACs and ready to collaborate with Republicans and the Trump White House.

But consumer protection advocates, other senators, and even crypto-leaning regulators have warned that the GENIUS Act would create a Wild West in stablecoins, provide weak standards, deprive users of financial security, and give Big Tech firms (like Elon Musk’s X) the ability to create a lightly monitored private currency.

https://prospect.org/power/2025-03-10-some-democrats-endorse-bill-allowing-elon-musk-create-own-currency/

Rather obvious who enables Trump/Musk and who does not.

Joseph Stiglitz: Bitcoin ought to be outlawed
The World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org › stories › 2017/11 › joseph-...
Nov 30, 2017 — Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said the cryptocurrency 'doesn't serve any useful function'.

[SheltieLover]

1. I agree with Stiglitz.

[Passages]

2. Yes, and with good reason.

He has had this viewpoint for many years now.

[SheltieLover]

3. Crypto is great for money laundering & scamming people.

Not much else imo.

[highplainsdem]

4. That's insane, and it's particularly shameful for Democrats to support it.

[Passages]

6. It is disturbing.

Our leadership depends, imho, on making these kinds of alliances deal-breakers.

You don't get to do this and then it is business as usual. You don't get to keep committee chairs etc when you clearly are compromised.

[LymphocyteLover]

12. Agreed. Sounds like they've been bought by the "industry", which is terrible

[Historic NY]

5. If they blow US Treasury taxpayer money there will be a blood bath

the like no one has ever seen.

[Passages]

7. Yes, I agree..the stakes are that high.

[Irish_Dem]

8. Crypto is a scam making the billionaires richer.

[LisaM]

9. I remember an article about the crypto people helping force out Biden.

They thought a Harris administration would be more friendly to crypto.

I'm flabbergasted that anyone would think it was stable in any sense of the word.

[Think. Again.]

10. From the lnked article...

That the GENIUS bill is a priority for the White House and the Senate Republican leadership, to be rushed through Congress in the first hundred days, has not deterred Democrats from backing it. But in the context of President Trump’s illegal dismantling of agencies and commandeering of Congress’s power of the purse, his maneuvers on crypto in particular make it confounding why Democrats would throw their support his way.

[louis-t]

11. His own money backed by "Full Faith and Credit"

of Tesla? Just like the co-presidents, his crypto won't serve any useful function.

[slightlv]

13. Maybe I'm just too old to see any good that can come from this,

but I can sure see the evil surrounding it. If the criminals and oligarchs want it so badly, that ought to be the "tell" that it's to the normal person's detriment.

All I've seen it do is bankrupt people (or come close to it), and be a great vehicle for laundering money. It squanders our planet's finite resources for the advantage of a very few people and is not accepted anywhere else as legitimate currency. If they want private currency so bad, why don't they just take out their old board games of Monopoly and use the play money that came with it? Seems to be about the same, to me. Like I said, this may be one of those things I really am just too old to "get." And I am willing to admit it.

[iemanja]

14. The collaboration continues

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

15. Only if you want to maroon him on a desert island

He can have his own country. Call it Muskatania.