Trump administration moves ahead with new crypto rules, with key bill stalled in Congress

Trump administration moves ahead with new crypto rules, with key bill stalled in Congress

Jennifer Schonberger · Senior Reporter

Thu, August 20, 2026 at 7:52 PM GMT+3 3 min read

• COIN +7.67%
• HOOD -1.35%

The Trump administration is aggressively pushing forward with executive actions to bolster the cryptocurrency industry as comprehensive regulatory legislation stalls in the Senate.

During a White House meeting with crypto executives on Wednesday, President Trump urged Congress to break its deadlock on the Clarity Act. The bill remains hung up over disputed ethics language designed to prevent government officials from profiting off digital assets. Trump called on industry executives to work with regulators to move the sector forward.

The meeting drew roughly two dozen attendees, including Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig, and the chief executives of Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD), as well as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance has a partnership with Coinbase.)

Simultaneously, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is accelerating its regulatory timeline. Speaking at the Wyoming Blockchain Summit on Wednesday, Acting Comptroller Jonathan Gould announced plans to finalize federal rules for stablecoins by November, with the agency set to begin processing crypto license applications starting in January.

The upcoming framework stems from the GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, which established the first federal regulatory framework for stablecoins — digital tokens pegged to the US dollar and backed one-to-one by high-quality liquid assets like cash and short-term Treasurys.

"This is critical for payment stablecoin issuance," TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg said of the OCC's forthcoming rule.

He also said the rules could be positive for banks. The OCC proposed preventing stablecoin companies from using loopholes to pay interest to their users.

"We are working with great speed here," Gould said at the Wyoming Blockchain Summit. "We very much appreciate the comments that we received on our proposal … we heard you, and we will make changes and have made changes accordingly in the final rule to reflect some of the comments."

Read more: How stablecoins work

Gould noted that over the past 18 months, the OCC has received 40 applications for new bank charters, with more than half of those involving some form of digital asset activity. That marks an eightfold increase from the prior administration.

"It is becoming ordinary course to involve and integrate payment stablecoins, etc. in the business plans that we are now seeing presented to the OCC for consideration," Gould said.

"Crypto is part of the business of banking, and we have been making sure that that is the case through our actions, both on the chartering front and through legal interpretations," he added.

The OCC's push coincides with broader regulatory shifts across Washington. Also this week, the SEC proposed rules that would allow startups to raise capital through tokens without triggering traditional securities registration.

"This is positive and long overdue in the crypto space," TD Cowen's Seiberg said. "It provides a roadmap not just for how one can use tokens to raise capital but also how tokens can lose their designation as securities if the project becomes decentralized."

Jennifer Schonberger is a veteran financial journalist covering markets, the economy, and investing. At Yahoo Finance, she covers the Federal Reserve, Congress, the White House, the Treasury, the SEC, the economy, cryptocurrencies, and the intersection of Washington policy with finance. Follow her on X @Jenniferisms and on Instagram.

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