As we’ve been covering at the Prospect, the crypto industry has been angling to cash in the rewards it earned after bankrolling dozens of politicians in their 2024 campaigns. In the Senate, a handful of Democrats teed up the first effort in this payback by endorsing a bill called the GENIUS Act purportedly intended to regulate stablecoins, which are digital assets pegged to the U.S. dollar, used mostly to facilitate crypto trades.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bill-signing ceremony. Some might call it corruption, at the highest levels of the presidency. As a result, most of those Democrats have backed off, at least for now. That includes one of the two Democratic co-sponsors of the GENIUS Act, Sen. Angela…