Weekly Top Stories - 3/28

This week in the newsletter, we write about GameStop’s bitcoin treasury strategy, the House’s announcement of its STABLE Act for stablecoin regulation, and the Senate Banking Committee holding confirmation hearings on Trump nominees that are key to crypto regulation.

GameStop Announces Bitcoin Treasury Strategy

On Tuesday, March 25, GameStop (GME) announced an update to its investment policy to include BTC as a treasury reserve asset. The company currently holds $4.77bn in cash on its balance sheet and followed up the next day with plans to issue $1.3bn convertible notes to acquire BTC. These notes, due in 2030, carry a conversion premium of 35% to 40%.

In its 10-K SEC filing, GameStop also mentioned that it will be closing a “significant number” of stores in the fiscal year 2025, on top of the closure of 590 stores in the US in 2024.

If GameStop acquires $1.3bn worth of BTC, the company would become the fourth-largest public company shareholder of BTC, just behind Riot Platforms and just above Tesla. Since the end of 2024, 19 new public companies have added BTC to their balance sheets. Meanwhile, Strategy continued its accumulation of BTC and is now holding 2.41% of BTC’s total supply.

OUR TAKE:

Saylor posted a photo with its CEO Ryan Cohen and the message “Welcome to Team Bitcoin.” The trend of generally adding bitcoin to a portfolio is only growing, with major institutional investors adding the asset, particularly via Bitcoin ETFs in 2024. However, GameStop appears to be adopting Strategy’s more aggressive playbook by leveraging debt markets to raise cash to purchase Bitcoin, something that Saylor has been encouraging, and which more firms are doing worldwide, with Metaplanet in Japan and Matador in Canada, joining Semler Scientific, Strategy, and now GameStop in the U.S.

Beyond corporates, a lot of attention is on the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (“SBR”), which President Trump created via an executive order titled “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Assets Stockpile” on March 6, 2025. That order prohibits the U.S. government from selling Bitcoin that it currently holds and orders the Treasury and Commerce Departments to “develop strategies for acquiring additional Government BTC provided that such strategies are budget neutral.” The order makes a clear distinction between Bitcoin and altcoins, with the “digital assets stockpile” section prohibiting purchases and leaving management of the stockpile up to the discretion of the Treasury Secretary.

The market is focused on corporate purchases by firms like Strategy and GameStop and the creation of the SBR as catalysts to send BTC higher in 2025. While the corporates continue to advance, we expect it will be some time before the U.S. government purchases Bitcoin. Doing so in a budget-neutral way is tricky, given the demands placed on any identifiable offsets, particularly for an administration that has emphasized reducing the budget deficit. Furthermore, the logistics are complicated. Gathering BTC the government already holds (as the results of civil or criminal asset forfeitures over the years) is harder than most understand given the vast footprint of the Department of Justice (there are 94 U.S. attorney districts), the encumbrance of some such BTC in ongoing legal proceedings, and the need to establish secure custody to house the SBR. Nonetheless, the White House continues to press for action on the SBR and digital assets generally, with Executive Director of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets Bo Hines reiterating commitment at the DC Blockchain Summit Wednesday and President Trump doing the same last Thursday at the Digital Assets Summit in New York. – Alex Thorn

Stablecoin Legislation & Businesses Heat Up

On Wednesday, March 26, the U.S. House officially released its stablecoin bill, the STABLE Act, following the Senate Banking Committee's bipartisan advancement of its own stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act. The STABLE Act was introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) and Rep. French Hill (R-AR), both senior Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee with direct oversight of digital asset policy. Like the Senate bill, the House version concerns the regulation of companies issuing dollar-denominated digital tokens, but their key differences include federal vs. state oversight for large issuers above $10bn, treatment of foreign stablecoin issuers, reserve assets, bankruptcy treatments, and prohibition on yield. At the DC Blockchain Summit that took place on Wednesday, lawmakers expressed hope for the stablecoin efforts to be finalized by August 2025.

The legislative push comes amid a surge of activity across both the private and public sectors, with a growing number of institutions actively testing, launching, and expanding their efforts on stablecoins and tokenization. In the private sector, Custodia Bank and Vantage Bank tokenized a U.S. bank’s demand deposits on a permissionless blockchain. Fidelity is reportedly in the advanced stage of testing a stablecoin. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, is expanding its footprint in South America with an increasing stake of 70% in Adecoagro, an agricultural company. Notably, WLFI, the DeFi project operated by affiliates of the Trump Organization, is seizing this opportunity to launch USD1, a stablecoin fully backed by short-term US treasuries and cash, and it will be available on Ethereum and BNB chain through partnership with BitGo.

Infrastructure players are also ramping up efforts to integrate stablecoins and tokenized assets into traditional financial systems. CME Group is testing blockchain-based settlement and clearing in Google Cloud, with a target launch of the services in 2026. ICE is partnering with Circle and Hashnote to explore use cases for USDC and USYC across ICE’s markets, from derivatives exchanges to clearinghouses and data services.

In the public sector, the state of Wyoming, represented in the Senate by Senator Cynthia Lummis, is taking a pioneering role in launching its own stablecoin, the Wyoming Stable Token (WYST). Working with LayerZero, a crypto interoperability protocol, the state of Wyoming expects to launch WYST in July. The initiative is backed by the Wyoming Stable Token Act, first introduced in February 2022 and passed in March 2023, reflecting the state’s multi-year effort in embracing digital assets.

OUR TAKE:

Two weeks after the GENIUS Act was voted out of the Senate Banking Committee with 5 Democrats joining Republicans, the House is getting ready for their own stablecoin markup session. We think the GENIUS Act can pass the Senate with 65-70 votes, and if the STABLE Act ultimately passes the House, the two bills will need to be reconciled before heading to President Trump’s desk for signature. Congress is moving swiftly to finalize a regulatory framework for stablecoins because they represent a multifaceted opportunity: 1) grow acceptance and usage of the dollar worldwide (Treasury Secretary Bessent said on March 7 that “we are going to keep the U.S. the dominant reserve currency in the world and we will use stablecoins to do that.”); 2) create and solidify a long term buyer of U.S. debt at a time when the administration is seeking to push down rates; and 3) because stablecoins are an obviously more efficient system for money movement, and supporting their growth helps a digital asset industry that the White House is keen to promote.

Laura Shin reported on Tuesday that some forces are lobbying to combine stablecoin legislation with legislation defining the bounds and jurisdictions of market regulators overseeing the crypto industry (“market structure legislation”). Forcing these two bills – stablecoins and market structure – into the same package would be a mistake, in our view. Stablecoin legislation has broad appeal, with 5 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee defying Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to join Republicans in support. Regardless of whether market structure has significant or bipartisan support, materially altering the package by inserting another giant pile of complicated language could jeopardize the consensus. Broadly speaking, we believe a deal in hand is worth more than two in progress.

An emergent consensus and eventual signing of stablecoin legislation into law will create further openings for traditional banks and capital markets firms to enter the digital assets ecosystem. A key feature of both the STABLE and GENIUS Acts is that they authorize banks to issue their own stablecoins, which could create a massive source of new stablecoin demand. Coupled with the OCC’s rescission of Interpretive Letter 1179 on March. 7, and the removal of “reputational risk” from both the OCC and FDIC supervisory handbooks, these regulatory tailwinds will enhance the adoption and integration of digital assets with the traditional financial system in a way that grows digital assets usage and adoption but also efficiency and transparency in traditional markets. – Alex Thorn & Jianing Wu

Senate Hearings on Key Financial Posts

The Senate Banking Committee held confirmation hearings for Trump nominees to key posts at the OCC, SEC, and Treasury Department. The Committee questioned four nominees:

• Luke Pettit, currently senior advisor to Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), nominated to become Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance

• Paul Atkins, currently CEO of consultancy Patomak Global Partners, nominated to become Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission

• Jonathan Gould, currently partner at law firm Jones Day and former OCC staffer and Senate Banking lawyer, nominated to be Comptroller of the Currency (head of the OCC)

• Marcus Molinaro, current member of the House of Representatives representing NY-19, nominated to become Federal Transit Administrator at the Department of Transportation

Paul Atkins called issues at the SEC, including high attrition, sanctions of agency lawyers, and losses in court, “disturbing” and called for the agency to “get back to basics.” Atkins said that he would “absolutely” work to ensure that everyone in crypto who seeks to play by the rules “would be treated fairly.” Sen. Warren (D-MA) criticized Atkins for aspects of his prior service as an SEC Commissioner in the early 2000s and suggested that Atkins was conflicted due to his work at Patomak advising financial and crypto firms.

• Kennedy pressed Atkins on the SEC’s role in investigating SBF’s parents and the foreign companies and American companies’ treatment (45:58)

• Warren and Warnock grilled Atkins on the 2008 financial crisis and kept asking if Atkins thought it was due to “over-regulation.” Atkins said it was due to “mis-regulation”

Jonathan Gould said that “it is unacceptable for banks or regulators to discriminate on customers on the basis of the customers politics, religion, or the mere fact that they are engaged in legal activities that, for whatever reason, are politically disfavored.” About debanking as part of Chokepoint 2.0, Gould said he “would do whatever [he] can if confirmed to shine a spotlight on these activities and make sure they are not allowed in the banking system.” Regarding banks interacting with crypto, Gould said, “I believe that many of these activities are clearly legally permissible and I would hope, as Comptroller, to engage on the hard work determining ways in which these activities that are lawful can be done within the system in a safe and sound fashion.”

Senators have until noon today (Friday, March 28) to post written questions to the nominees, and the nominees have until noon Monday to respond. Assuming these questions and responses are sent and received according to schedule, we expect the Senate to vote to confirm Atkins, Gould, and Pettit pretty quickly, with Atkins taking priority and probably being confirmed within the next 2-3 weeks.

OUR TAKE:

Paul Atkins and Jonathan Gould will be important figures implementing the U.S. government’s crypto policies as Chair of the SEC and Comptroller of the Currency, respectively. Both have signaled support for progressive regulatory policies related to the digital assets industry and are expected to continue the rollback of the Biden Administration’s approach, which each agency has already begun. Luke Pettit will be Assistant Secretary for Domestic Finance, a key role in Treasury that works on everything related to the Treasury Department and banks and financial institutions. Pettit is currently senior advisor to Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and has been a driving force behind crypto legislation in the Senate Banking Committee, including the GENIUS Act.

It's hard to overstate the pivot that these nominees, and others already in their seats, represent from the Biden Administration as it relates to the government’s approach to digital assets. Crypto has a clear and present regulatory tailwind, but now it needs to deliver. The government may stop persecuting the industry – stop suing good actors, stop promoting widespread debanking – but it’s the industry that must deliver viable use cases, products, and technology. – Alex Thorn

Charts of the Week

The dollar-denominated market cap of stablecoins reached a new all-time high of $234.6 billion on March 27, 2025, and is up $30.9 billion (15%) since the start of 2025. Optimism from financial institutions on stablecoins and pending regulatory guidance from the U.S. government are driving growth. The stablecoin supply nearing the quarter-trillion-dollar mark signals a transformative shift in the adoption of digital assets.

USDT and USD dominance are at 61.39% and 25.64%, respectively. Year-to-date (YTD) USDT dominance has declined 672 basis points, while USDC dominance has increased 415 basis points. Still, USDC dominance is 645 basis points below the level it was at when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed in March 2023. Circle, the issuer of USDC, held assets backing their stablecoin in the defunct bank and faced headwinds from regulators in the year-plus that followed its collapse. On a relative basis, USDC still hasn’t recovered from these events, while USDT has benefitted, growing its relative share of the stablecoin market cap by 800 basis points since then.

Other News

• FDIC follows OCC to eradicate ‘reputational risk’ category from bank exams

• Polymarket to accept Solana deposits starting today

• Strategy’s bitcoin holdings cross 500,000 BTC after stock sales

• Trump crypto project World Liberty launches stablecoin on Ethereum, BNB Chain

• House of Doge launches reserve with 10 Million dogecoin