I have spent enough time inside Washington to know that a bill almost never goes from negotiation to the president’s desk in six months. When it does, there is usually a crisis forcing it. The GENIUS Act did it with no crisis at all. The president directed federal agencies to build a digital asset framework by Executive Order on January 23, 2025, and the bill became law six months later, on July 18. 

I was at Treasury during the pandemic, and I saw legislation move at that pace only when the system was under real stress, when the CARES Act was passed in 2020. No such crisis was forcing GENIUS, but it still cleared both chambers with bipartisan support in roughly six months. It tells you how seriously Washington is now taking digital…