US President Donald Trump and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong met behind closed doors shortly before the president said bankers were trying to undermine the GENIUS Act in a Truth Social article, CoinDesk has confirmed.
“The United States needs to get the market structure in place as soon as possible. Americans should make more money with their money,” Trump said in his message Tuesday. “Banks are making record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful crypto program that will eventually end up in China and other countries if we ignore the Clarity Act.”
Politico was the first to report the meeting between Armstrong and Trump. Subsequently, the president publicly supported Coinbase’s “position in [the] an ongoing lobbying clash with banks that has derailed a major cryptocurrency bill.
The outlet cited “two people with knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss a matter behind closed doors” as the source for the meeting between Trump and Armstrong. He also said it was unclear what topics they discussed during the meeting.
However, he reiterated, “this came just before Trump wrote on social media that banks ‘need to make a good deal with the crypto industry’ in order to advance digital asset legislation that is blocked on Capitol Hill.”
The White House and Coinbase did not respond to a request for comment from CoinDesk.
The market structure bill has been stalled since lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee were expected to debate and vote on it. The point holding back the adoption of the crypto bill is that banks claim that stable interest rates could affect bank deposits and therefore, in particular, their lending capacity. Crypto exchanges say individuals should be able to earn rewards on their stablecoin holdings, which they say the GENIUS Act allows.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday that stablecoin issuers that pay interest on customer balances should be regulated like banks. Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, objected to Dimon, saying that “the deception here is that it is not the payment of a balance’s yield per se that requires bank-style regulation, but rather the lending or remortgage of the dollars that make up the underlying balance.” Witt also said that the GENIUS Act “explicitly prohibits stablecoin issuers from doing the latter. Stablecoins ≠ Deposits.”
Crypto-related stocks, including COIN, surged on Wednesday amid a broader rise in crypto prices. COIN climbed above $200, reaching its highest price since late January.
