‘I Had No Idea How Hard This Was Going to Be’

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The U.S. Senate appears to be getting shut to passing its landmark stablecoin invoice, the GENIUS Act — a battle its champion Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) mentioned has been extremely hard-fought.

“It has been extremely difficult,” Lummis mentioned throughout a hearth chat with Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “I had no idea how hard this was going to be.”

Last week, the Senate voted to advance the invoice, simply clearing the 60-vote threshold required to kick the invoice to its final dialogue part earlier than the ultimate vote to go it out of the physique solely. An earlier try failed on a bipartisan foundation after Senate Democrats, led by long-time crypto sceptic Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in addition to a number of Republicans together with Missouri’s Josh Hawley and Kentucky’s Rand Paul, voted in opposition to cloture.

Lummis, whose workers (together with that of the invoice’s co-sponsor, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York)) has performed a key position within the behind-the-scenes negotiations to get the GENIUS Act handed, mentioned that she thinks the Senate has reached a remaining deal. If the invoice passes, each Lummis and Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), the invoice’s sponsor, claimed that it will be the primary piece of laws handed out of the Senate Banking Committee in eight years.

“It’s taken a tremendous amount of work,” Hagerty mentioned, talking on a separate panel dialogue on Tuesday. Hagerty added that long-time crypto skeptic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the invoice’s foremost opponent, made a concerted effort to drag out the proceedings within the hopes of stalling the laws’s progress.

Hagerty mentioned that the invoice, as soon as handed, can be essentially the most bipartisan piece of laws to go by way of the Senate Banking Committee in over a decade. While the invoice’s supporters see that as a win, they’re additionally pissed off with the issue in getting laws generally handed by way of the committee.

“We don’t have the muscle memory anymore to legislate. That’s our job,” Lummis mentioned. “It really is very frustrating, very exhausting, and you have to keep your creativity, your sense of humor and your patience about you.”

Lummis added that she was “very hopeful” the Senate may work behind-the-scenes with the House on a market construction invoice, noting that the House has the benefit of “muscle memory” (following its passage of FIT21 final 12 months) over the Senate when it comes to the following hurdle of crypto laws.