At the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance spoke about changing cryptocurrency policies under former President Biden.
00:00Now that means a few substantive concrete steps. And of course, the first and most important of those steps is straightforward.
00:11We've got to clean up the wreckage that the last administration left us.
00:16And since day one, that is exactly what we've been trying to do.
00:20Our administration, we prioritize eliminating the rules, the red tape, and the lawfare that we saw aimed at crypto by our predecessors.
00:29We're ending the weaponization of federal regulations against this community.
00:34To put it simply, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is dead and it's not coming back under the Trump administration.
00:48And by the way, it's crazy that was ever even controversial, the idea of using the regulatory power of the government to crush an industry
00:57and to crush people who espoused a view that you didn't like. It's crazy.
01:02But let my words today serve as Operation Chokepoint. Let me serve as its obituary.
01:08Now this is my vow to every single person here.
01:15You will never see this administration trying to handicap your community or diminish the impact it's had on the economy.
01:24Instead, we reject the Biden administration's legacy of death by a thousand enforcement actions.
01:32We reject regulators.
01:37Maybe the most important thing that we did for this community, we reject regulators and we fired Gary Gensler and we're going to fire everybody like him.
01:45And we know that people like Gary Gensler, the game that they played is that under the pretense of consumer protection,
02:01they attacked every single effort to democratize our financial markets and that is over.
02:08America.
02:09I grew up in a working class family. I believe that America is a place where anyone should be able to make a fortune no matter where you grew up,
02:21what degree you may or may not have.
02:23And in recent years, I'm hard pressed to think of a better place to do so than right here in the digital assets industry.
02:30Now, our second substantive step is we're trying to create a clear pro-growth legal framework for stablecoins in this country.
02:38And I know we've got some solid allies in Congress.
02:41Is Cynthia Loomis out there today or does she already go home?
02:45Well, you know, I was supposed to have dinner last night with Cynthia Loomis.
02:50We had a little event yesterday and I looked around and I said, where the hell is Cynthia Loomis?
02:54And somebody said, well, she's got a dinner she had to go to.
02:57And I said, I'm the vice president. Unless she's having dinner with the president, Cynthia does not have an excuse to skip this event.
03:04But we love Cynthia and I know that she's one of the great advocates for your industry in the United States Congress.
03:19Now, I know led by Cynthia and other great legislators, Congress is hard at work getting the Genius Act passed
03:25and across the president's desk as quickly as possible.
03:29And that's an important step.
03:31It's with good reason because regulatory uncertainty in this country has pushed way too much stablecoin activity overseas over the last few years.
03:41Now, somebody said to me yesterday that Bitcoin has done so much over the last few years with so many headwinds.
03:50Wouldn't it be nice to have a government that provided some tailwinds to one of the fastest growing industries in our country?
03:56And that's what we aim to do.
03:57And once the Genius Act is enacted, it's poised to vastly expand the use of stablecoins as a digital payment system for millions of our fellow Americans.
04:13It will also protect coin holders and inject further transparency into the market.
04:20And let me be emphatic on one other point.
04:22In this administration, we do not think that stablecoins threaten the integrity of the United States dollar. Quite the opposite.
04:32In fact, we view them as a force multiplier of our economic might.
04:42Dollar-pegged stablecoins, particularly once Genius is enacted, is only going to help the American economy and it's only going to help the American dollar.
04:51So, again, we're optimistic that the Senate is able to move quickly on passing a Clean Genius Act and for the House to follow up and do the same.
05:00And, of course, once that happens, our great President Trump will sign it into law the minute it comes across his desk.
05:06Now, when that's happened, when the administration will then fully shift to our third priority, which is to enact a transparent and tailored regulatory framework for digital assets.
05:23One that's pro-innovation and fully incorporates crypto into the mainstream economy.
05:29And, again, I've talked to so many of you over the last couple of days.
05:33And the consistent fear that I hear with all the great things that have happened over the last couple of months.
05:40The consistent fear that I hear is that there's still this perception that digital assets are not welcome in the mainstream economy.
05:47And let me promise you that our effort to change the policy is purely about changing that.
05:54We want our fellow Americans to know that crypto and digital assets, and particularly Bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay.
06:13Now, we think the way to do that legislatively, because, again, I hope that our party is in charge for a long time, but nothing is ever guaranteed in politics.
06:23So the best way to ensure that crypto is part of the mainstream economy is through a market structure bill that champions and doesn't restrict the extraordinary value that Bitcoin and other digital assets represent.
06:36Right now, in this Congress and with this administration, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unleash innovation and use it to improve the lives of countless American citizens.
06:50But if we fail to create regulatory clarity now, we risk chasing this $3 trillion industry offshore in search of a friendlier jurisdiction, and President Trump is going to fight to make sure that does not happen.
07:05Think about this, by locking in smart, pro-innovation rules of the road, we can also make sure that Democrats, or anybody else, never wage another war on the crypto community.
