In the space of a single year, the asset class built to escape the establishment was absorbed by it. Washington passed its first stablecoin law, stood up a strategic bitcoin reserve, and — one case at a time — retired the enforcement campaign it had waged against the industry for half a decade.
The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, requires payment stablecoins to hold their reserves in US Treasuries and forbids them from paying holders a yield. In the same period the largest asset manager in the world said its bitcoin exchange-traded fund had become its single biggest source of revenue.
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