Senator Gallego urges more time as partisan rift deepens over digital asset legislation
Democratic senators have blocked a key procedural vote on a landmark cryptocurrency bill, halting momentum on what could have become the first major federal framework for regulating stablecoins and digital assets.
The vote, held on May 8, failed 48–49 — well short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation. The bill, known as the GENIUS Act, had received rare bipartisan attention and strong backing from the cryptocurrency industry. But the effort to fast-track it crumbled following revelations that a foreign government planned to funnel billions through a crypto firm tied to former President Donald Trump.
Despite supporting the bill in principle, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, asked Republicans to delay the vote until May 12 to allow time for further bipartisan negotiation. “There’s a lot of backsliding that happened between the committee vote and the text that came out,” Gallego told reporters. “I think that we can get there, but the version that currently is in place is not what we negotiated before.”
Gallego, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and its top-ranking Democrat on the digital assets subcommittee, has been a central figure in closed-door discussions on the legislation. Ahead of the vote, he expressed optimism about bipartisan progress. “We’ve made some great progress over this past week,” he said. “It was done in good faith, and I want to thank my Republican colleagues. The reason you’re hearing some hesitancy — legislation of this scope and importance really just cannot be rushed. … We don’t want to shut this down to the point where we’re ending all this work that we’ve put into it. We want to bring this economy and this innovation to the United States, and I’m asking for that time.”
However, Republican leaders insisted on moving forward. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, defended the bill’s process. “I don’t know what Democrats would change about the process that this bill has gone through,” he said. “It had a three-hour markup in the Banking Committee that considered 40 amendments. That’s what we used to call regular order around here.”
Democratic support began to erode after The New York Times reported that the government of the United Arab Emirates planned to back a $2 billion deal using coins issued by a company controlled by Trump and his family. The allegations prompted renewed scrutiny of Trump’s financial entanglements in the crypto space.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, broke with Gallego and aligned with party leadership to support a symbolic countermeasure — the “End Crypto Corruption Act” — spearheaded by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York. “Trump is cashing in on his presidency and making millions from his own crypto coins — this is corruption in broad daylight,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’m supporting this bill to make it illegal for the President and other government officials to make a profit from crypto assets. It’s time to put a stop to this.”
The GENIUS Act would have established regulatory oversight for stablecoins — digital currencies pegged to assets like the U.S. dollar — and is considered the most ambitious crypto legislation to reach the Senate floor.
The debate comes as the Trump administration continues to position the United States as a global leader in crypto. On his third day in office, Trump signed an executive order to form a digital assets working group and directed the creation of a national stockpile of crypto. His Treasury Department also repealed a transparency rule that would have required crypto platforms to report user transactions — a move critics say weakens oversight.
The bill’s failure on the Senate floor may prove temporary, but it underscores growing partisan tension over how to regulate a rapidly evolving digital economy, especially one so closely tied to a former president’s personal fortune.
