Bessent: crypto will be a new 'umbrella' for the US dollar

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has framed crypto as a pillar of dollar power rather than just a market to regulate. Speaking on Tuesday at Ripple's Swell conference alongside CEO Brad Garlinghouse, he argued that reserve currencies were historically backed by military might, but that technology leadership now matters more, and that "we are going to win in the digital asset stack," CoinDesk reports.

The argument in three points

• Tech blocs: countries are choosing between US and Chinese AI and chip ecosystems, and Bessent expects the same choice over financial rails.
• Stablecoins as demand for dollars: he said more than 90% of stablecoins are dollar-backed and their issuers often hold US government debt as reserves, so growth could be "an important source of funding for the Treasury." He also rejected the idea that they only replace dollars people already hold, pointing to savers in high-inflation countries.
• Plan B for regulation: calling the Clarity Act's failure in Congress a disappointment, he said Treasury's "convening powers" with the SEC and CFTC could deliver rules through agency action, plus guardrails against crypto debanking.

Our take

This is the clearest statement yet of the administration's logic: the GENIUS Act is treated as a way to export the dollar, not as a niche crypto law. That is good news for dollar stablecoins and their issuers, who become quasi-buyers of Treasuries.

The weak spot is durability. Agency guidance can be rewritten by the next SEC or CFTC leadership in a way that a statute cannot, and firms planning multi-year products know it. The same goes for debanking: regulators have already published reports on the practice, but best-practice "guardrails" are softer than a legal ban. Until market-structure legislation passes, US crypto policy rests on who holds office, and Bessent's speech, however bullish, does not change that.