The burgeoning crypto industry scored a major win in Washington, D.C., last week with the passage of the GENIUS Act, which could bring stablecoins and digital currency mainstream, and Les Borsai, the co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, told Newsmax that the legislation will benefit the United States in many ways.
"A stablecoin is a digital currency that is pegged to the U.S. dollar in the simplest of terms," Borsai told Newsmax's "National Report" Tuesday. "We're going to use stablecoins globally, so it's going to work in favor of the dollar."
The bill establishes guardrails and consumer protections for stablecoins, with its name standing for "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins."
Some financial experts say they think the law will disrupt the economy.
In an opinion piece for The New York Times last week, Dr. Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that by legislating stablecoins, the legislation "would give hundreds — perhaps even thousands — of American companies the ability to issue their own currencies" and unleash chaos.
But Borsai told Newsmax that the measure won't disrupt the nation's banking system.
"A lot of the benefit of stablecoins is the underlying kind of ecosystems that they're connected to," he said. "When we talk about cross-border payments and 24-hour trading and taking out central authorities, I think the GENIUS Act, one of the really good, compelling things that focused on, is you didn't have to be a bank to be an issuer."
Borsai added that he thinks the Trump administration is "sparking innovation" by pushing for the legislation.
Meanwhile, the legislation will expand access to stablecoins for smaller banks and their customers, as it will "strengthen digital currencies across the board," he said.
"We've seen banks trying to figure out a way to get into the space, and they've struggled in the past," said Borsai. "I mean, we saw the debanking that happened, you know, based on the SEC's regulatory approach, which was approached through enforcement, and it hurt innovation in terms of the banking adoption."
And with the narrative changing, "we're going to continue to see even financial innovation, which is something we don't see too often," he said. "You don't hear about finance and innovation, and I think it's just been something that's happened, had to happen for a long time.
"We stopped taking money and trucks late at night to get it to other banks a long time ago. So this was going to happen eventually, and I think we're going to see the institutional adoption happen at scale now as well."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.