The White House is preparing to bring senior banking and crypto executives into the same room in a bid to revive stalled digital asset legislation and hammer out a compromise that can actually pass Congress. The move signals that President Donald Trump’s team is no longer content to leave the future of crypto regulation to fragmented agency guidance and piecemeal bills. Instead, it is trying to broker a political deal that aligns industry demands with the administration’s broader financial and national security agenda.
At stake is not only the fate of a single stalled Crypto Bill but also the shape of the CLARITY Act framework that will define how banks, stablecoin issuers, and trading platforms operate in the United States. The upcoming meetings are designed to reset talks that collapsed earlier this month and to reconcile the GENIUS Act’s strictures on stablecoins with a more expansive vision for digital asset innovation.
The White House steps in after stalled talks
The White House has decided that the only way to break the impasse over a Stalled Crypto Bill is to put the key players around the same table and force a conversation about trade offs. According to people familiar with the planning, officials intend to Host Crypto and Banking Executives for Talks after negotiations over new digital asset rules collapsed earlier this month, leaving markets and lobbyists guessing what would come next. By convening both sides, the administration is signaling that it wants a negotiated outcome rather than another round of dueling press releases and agency turf battles, and it is using the institutional weight of Jan meetings at the executive mansion to underscore that point.
In practical terms, that means the White House is inviting large banks that want clearer custody and capital rules, crypto companies that have pushed for more flexible trading and token issuance regimes, and policy staff who helped shape the original Crypto Bill. Some of the participants, who spoke on condition of anonymity in earlier reporting, have described the gathering as a last chance to salvage a legislative package before the political calendar hardens. The decision by The White House to personally Host Crypto and Banking Executives for Talks on the Stalled Crypto Bill, as detailed in one Jan report, reflects a calculation that only direct engagement can rescue the effort.
CLARITY Act back on the table
Behind the scenes, the real focus of the upcoming discussions is the CLARITY Act, the administration’s preferred vehicle for setting a comprehensive regulatory perimeter around digital assets. After earlier drafts ran into resistance from both consumer advocates and some Republican lawmakers, talks around CLARITY went quiet, and the market was left to interpret a patchwork of enforcement actions and agency guidance. Now, the White House is preparing to convene banks and crypto industry leaders next week to restart those CLARITY negotiations, using the stalled Crypto Bill as a starting point rather than an end in itself.
Officials see the CLARITY Act as the place to resolve core questions that have dogged the sector, including which tokens qualify as securities, how stablecoins should be supervised, and what role banks can play in custody and settlement. Internal briefing materials describe the upcoming session as a chance to align the legislative text with the economic realities of large custodial banks, retail trading platforms, and institutional investors. One analysis of the CLARITY Act outlook notes that the White House is leaning on structured research methods to map out the likely market impact of different compromise options, a sign that this is not just a political exercise but a technocratic one as well.
GENIUS Act’s stablecoin legacy
Any compromise the White House brokers will have to sit on top of the legal foundation created by the GENIUS Act, which President Trump signed into law over the summer of 2025. That statute was billed as a historic step that would help the United States lead the global race for secure and innovative digital finance, but it also imposed strict limits on how stablecoin issuers can operate. The GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, prohibited stablecoin issuers from paying interest, a provision that immediately reshaped business models for companies that had marketed yield bearing tokens to retail users.
The problem is that the GENIUS Act did not clearly specify whether that interest ban applied to all forms of yield, including rewards programs and tiered account structures, or only to explicit interest payments. That ambiguity has left both banks and crypto firms searching for clarity on how to design products that comply with the law without losing their competitive edge. According to one detailed account, The GENIUS Act’s vague language has become a central point of friction in the CLARITY talks, with some participants arguing that Congress must refine the statute to avoid chilling innovation. The same report notes that The GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, prohibited stablecoin issuers from paying interest but did not clearly specify whether that restriction covered every form of return, a gap highlighted in a Jan briefing on the law’s impact.
Trump’s digital asset strategy and political stakes
President Donald Trump’s decision to personally champion the GENIUS Act and now to send senior aides into CLARITY negotiations reflects a broader strategy to position the United States as a leader in digital finance while keeping tight control over systemic risks. When Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, the White House framed it as a historic piece of legislation that would pave the way for the United States to lead the global digital asset economy and bolster national security. That framing still shapes how officials talk about the current talks, which they see as a second phase of the same project rather than a separate initiative.
Politically, the stakes are high. If the White House can deliver a compromise that satisfies both major banks and leading crypto platforms, it will be able to claim that the administration brought order to a chaotic regulatory landscape while preserving innovation. Failure, by contrast, would leave the field to regulators and courts, with less predictability for businesses and investors. The official fact sheet that accompanied the signing of the GENIUS Act emphasized that Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law to ensure the United States leads in digital asset innovation and bolsters national security, a message that still underpins the administration’s GENIUS strategy as it heads into the new round of talks.
Who gets a seat at the table
The composition of the guest list for the upcoming White House meetings will go a long way toward determining whether a real compromise is possible. Trump officials are expected to bring in representatives from major banks that have been cautiously exploring digital asset custody, as well as executives from large crypto exchanges and stablecoin issuers that have been lobbying aggressively for clearer rules. The goal is to have all the key constituencies in the same room so that disagreements over issues like capital requirements, token listings, and stablecoin reserves can be aired directly rather than filtered through lobbyists and committee staff.
Regulators are also expected to play a visible role. Reporting indicates that Trump officials plan to meet banks and crypto companies as CLARITY talks resume, with participation from agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that have been central to enforcement in the sector. That mix of political appointees, career regulators, and industry leaders is designed to ensure that any deal reached in the room can be translated into workable statutory language and supervisory practice. One Report on the planned meetings notes that Trump officials will sit down with banks, crypto companies, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as CLARITY talks resume, underscoring how closely the regulatory agencies are tied into the process.
