Democratic lawmakers from the US House of Representatives have accused President Donald Trump and his administration of using the White House to enrich the presidential family through their crypto businesses, calling on Congress to fight corruption.

House Democrats Call Out ‘New Age of Corruption’

In a recent report from the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin claimed that President Trump had allegedly “exploited” the presidency and transformed the White House into “a personal money-making operation” that has added billions of dollars to his net worth through his crypto ventures.

The 27-page document, named “Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption,” compiled multiple news media outlet reports affirming that the US President has seen his family’s crypto holdings surge to $11.6 billion since he stepped into office in January, making over $800 million from the sale of digital assets in the first half of 2025.

As reported by Bitcoinist, a Financial Times investigation released in October claimed that the Trump family’s crypto fortune has surged to over $1 billion from his multiple digital asset ventures since his return to the White House.

The investigation explained that Trump’s digital asset businesses have significantly boosted the US President’s net worth on paper by billions of dollars, but only calculated the potential income from the realized profits of World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token and USD1 stablecoin, and the official TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins.

According to FT calculations, the TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins made around $362 million and $65 million, respectively, for a total of $427 million in sales and trading fees. Moreover, the WLFI token had generated approximately $550 million by the time of the investigation, while the USD1 stablecoin, which recorded $2.71 billion in total sales, potentially $42 million.

“Donald Trump has turned the Oval Office into the world’s most corrupt crypto startup operation, minting staggering personal fortunes for him and his family in less than a year.” Representative Raskin affirmed in a Press Release.

“We don’t know where all the money is coming from yet, but America has never seen corruption on this scale take place inside the White House. This Report shows how Trump’s so-called ‘pro-crypto agenda’ is just one more Trump family self-enrichment plan, built on pay-to-play deals and corrupt foreign interests seeking secret channels of access and influence,” he continued.

Trump’s Crypto Ventures Expose ‘Weaknesses’ Of US System

Raskin also stated that the Trump administration has “dismantled” federal oversight and safeguards that were set to protect Americans from fraud, scams, and financial exploitation. “Trump has been pardoning criminals who commit fraud through crypto and dismantling the regulations that protect legitimate American investors.”

The report presented a list of actions that advanced “Trump and his family’s personal financial interests at the expense of the law, ethics, and national security.” The evidence exposed in the document included claims that the President’s crypto ventures have “attracted substantial investments from foreign nationals and state-linked entities seeking to curry favor with the Administration.”

Last week, Democratic Senators expressed concerns about potential national security risks related to World Liberty Financial over token sales allegedly linked to illicit actors. In a letter, the lawmakers requested that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent investigate allegations that the Trump-backed company had sold tokens to sanctioned entities or individuals with ties to illicit actors in Russia and North Korea.

They also argued that World Liberty Financial and its token “lacks adequate safeguards to prevent bad actors from moving funds or gaining influence over its governance,” which raises concerns over a potential conflict of interest.

The Committee’s report highlighted that the Trump Administration has paused or ended most investigations and enforcement actions involving major crypto companies and disbanded multiple federal-level crypto enforcement units. In addition, it expressed concern about the controversial pardons issue to key industry players, like Binance’s co-founder, Changpeng Zhao.

Ultimately, the document warned that Trump’s crypto moves seemingly expose “severe weaknesses” in the US’s campaign finance, conflict-of-interest, and anti-bribery laws. “Congress must expose this dangerous grift, and defend the rule of law against the profiteers and criminals who would destroy it,” Raskin concluded.

Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto Market Structure Bill Gains Bipartisan Momentum as Coinbase’s Armstrong Says “We’re 90% There”

Even as Washington remains hobbled by a partial government shutdown, momentum for U.S. crypto market structure legislation is quietly reaching new heights.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the industry is “90%” of the way there, describing unprecedented bipartisan cooperation among senators working to finalize the long-awaited regulatory framework for digital assets.

Armstrong, who spent this week meeting with both Senate Democrats and Republicans, said the last few sticking points of the CLARITY Act — including rules for decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin rewards — are close to being resolved. 

“Both sides are working hard to figure out the final 10%, and we’re getting close,” he said in a social media post. “We’re bullish on getting a bill passed by year-end, and hopeful it’s out of Committee by Thanksgiving.”

The Coinbase chief’s optimism comes amid a surge of engagement between lawmakers and crypto executives, marking one of the most serious bipartisan pushes to bring clarity to digital asset regulation since Congress first began debating the issue years ago.

JUST IN: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says, “There is strong bipartisan support to get this market structure legislation done.” pic.twitter.com/Z8PI1OXDJc

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) October 23, 2025

Bipartisan crypto breakthrough in July

The legislation at the center of these discussions — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act) — passed the House of Representatives in July with a strong bipartisan majority of 294–137. 

The bill now sits before the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), with hopes it could advance to the Senate floor before the end of the year.

In a CNBC interview on Wednesday, Armstrong described “very productive” meetings with senators from both parties, calling the level of collaboration a positive sign for the U.S. crypto industry.

According to multiple people familiar with the meetings, senior lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) attended or participated in discussions with Armstrong and other crypto leaders such as Kraken co-CEO David Ripley, Uniswap Labs founder Hayden Adams, and Chainlink Labs’ Sergey Nazarov.

The CLARITY Act seeks to end years of regulatory ambiguity by clearly distinguishing which digital assets qualify as securities under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and which fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Under the bill’s framework, sufficiently decentralized networks would fall under CFTC oversight, while tokens with more centralized control or that function as investment contracts would remain under SEC jurisdiction.

The legislation also introduces clearer rules for decentralized finance, secondary trading markets, and custody services — areas where the lack of uniform federal guidance has long frustrated both innovators and investors.

DeFi and stablecoin legislation

Still, the final 10% of negotiations may prove the toughest. One of the key unresolved questions is how to regulate decentralized finance platforms. 

Armstrong has urged lawmakers to focus oversight on decentralized intermediaries — such as interfaces or aggregators — rather than attempting to regulate open-source protocols themselves.

Another area of tension involves stablecoin rewards, which Armstrong says the banking lobby is working to eliminate. Coinbase and other industry advocates argue that consumers should be able to earn yield on regulated stablecoin holdings, similar to how traditional savings accounts pay interest.

These debates underscore the competing visions within Congress: Democrats remain focused on preventing illicit finance and ensuring consumer protection, while Republicans emphasize innovation and competitiveness.

Despite the bipartisan goodwill, the timing remains precarious. The ongoing government shutdown has slowed committee work and pushed back the formal markup of the bill. Some lawmakers, including Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), have expressed skepticism that the committee is ready to move forward, citing unanswered questions about regulatory authority and industry influence.

Still, supporters say the momentum is undeniable. Sen. Lummis, who has long championed digital asset legislation, recently told attendees at the SALT Wyoming Blockchain Symposium that she expects the market structure bill to reach the president’s desk “before the end of the year — hopefully before Thanksgiving.”

This post Crypto Market Structure Bill Gains Bipartisan Momentum as Coinbase’s Armstrong Says “We’re 90% There” first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Transcends the Left-Right Political Divide — It’s a Tool for Human Rights

One month ago, Harshvardhan (“Hash”), an alumni of the MIT Bitcoin Club and an organizer for the MIT Freedom Tech Expo, told me in an interview about how a friend of his who is a social worker in Nepal and who was on the ground during the recent protests in the country doesn’t like Bitcoin.

“There’s a lot of people with left-leaning ideology who still think bitcoin is a capitalistic tool, and they’re not very comfortable with it yet,” explained Hash.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this point he made since we spoke.

As someone who was formerly more politically Liberal, I still have a lot of friends and acquaintances who seemingly shudder at the mere thought of my writing about Bitcoin for a living. I get the feeling that they think I’ve become some right-wing fanatic who only cares about money.

I can see why they might think that (despite it not being true). In the U.S., Bitcoin has very much become synonymous with the Trump administration and most of what the average person sees about it in the mainstream media is reporting on its price going up or down.

Put another way, if you’re not intentionally searching for stories about how Bitcoin facilitates financial inclusion, the freedom to transact, and protection from inflation/currency debasement, then you aren’t likely to find them, which means that the average person hardly — if ever — gets exposure to the human rights side of the Bitcoin story.

And so if you’re looking for some examples or thoughts to share with friends of yours who may be on the political left and don’t like Bitcoin as a result, I’ve included a few below:

Financial Inclusion

One of the most powerful stories of Bitcoin enabling financial inclusion is the story playing out in the informal settlement (i.e., slum) of Kenya’s Kibera right now.

Kibera is the largest informal settlement in Africa, and thanks to the hands-on work that Afribit Kibera is doing to educate members of the Kibera community about how to use Bitcoin, more and more of Kenya’s poorest and most financially vulnerable have been brought into the digital economy and are saving for the first time in their lives.

The story of the work Afribit Kibera is doing was highlighted in a recent segment by the BBC:

One of the points not mentioned in this segment, though, is that many of the residents of Kibera are refugees from other African nations and are currently ineligible for a national ID.

Without a national ID, these residents cannot use M-Pesa, a digital payments system that’s ubiquitous in Kenya.

However, with a Bitcoin Lightning wallet and Tando, a homegrown Kenyan app that enables payment in bitcoin and settlement in Kenyan shillings, these members of the community can take part in the digital economy, as neither require Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. (Yes, I know, some custodial Lightning wallets require varying degrees of KYC, but noncustodial Lightning wallets don’t.)

Freedom to Transact

Most of us in the West take for granted our freedom to transact over digital payment rails like PayPal, CashApp, or Revolut, which means we haven’t had much reason to think about how devastating it would be if our accounts via those services, or our bank accounts, were frozen or shut down.

However, activists and dissidents around the world, especially those living under authoritarian regimes, see their accounts closed often when they speak out against the powers that be. Debanking people or organizations that challenge the power of authoritarian rulers has become one of the first moves in the dictator’s playbook.

One of the most flagrant cases of this is when the Putin regime shut down the bank accounts of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

With that said, we also saw a wave of debanking in the United States under the Biden administration. During Operation Choke Point 2.0, the Biden administration debanked a number of Bitcoin and crypto companies, seemingly for no reason other than that they were politically out of favor.

This proves that, while the banking system and fintech companies are technically still private institutions, it only takes a certain amount of pressure from the powers that be — even democratically-elected officials — to stop people and companies from being able to transact.

In her book Broken Money, Lyn Alden highlights the importance of bitcoin as it pertains to this issue.

She states that “self-custodial financial services force governments to actually charge people with a crime before they can use pressure to freeze their accounts.”

Alden added that Bitcoin is bigger than political ideology in this regard.

“[Bitcoin] is not a ‘right or left’ issue, because one merely needs to imagine their least-favorite politician winning the next election, or two or three elections from now,” she wrote.

Freedom from Inflation

Many who are unfamiliar with Bitcoin, don’t understand the significance of its capped supply (There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin).

A perfectly finite supply of money contrasts starkly with fiat currencies, which have no supply cap. Fiat currencies can be printed to no end, which devalues the time and labor of the users of these currencies.

Those of us living in the United States have felt the pain of this currency debasement, as inflation levels have been notably high here. However, it’s important to note that the U.S. dollar is essentially the prettiest pig in the pen when it comes to fiat currencies.

Most other currencies are being debased at a more alarming rate, with the most severe instances of this being what has happened in countries such as Venezuela, Lebanon, Argentina, and Turkey.

This is why when Sabina Waithira, one of the co-founders of the aforementioned Tando, teaches university students in Kenya about bitcoin, she highlights that it offers freedom from inflation. 

Last week at the University of Nairobi, Chiromo campus, we spoke with computer science students about how Bitcoin offers true freedom. Freedom from inflation, freedom form high fees, and an open financial system for all. At Tando, we’ve made it possible to hold that freedom in… pic.twitter.com/B09YpK1GWT

— Tando (@tando_me) April 21, 2025

This sort of freedom is particularly important in a country with a currency that has been inflating at levels as high as 14% annually since the mid-2000s.

Bitcoin Is Politically Neutral

Since Bitcoin is an open protocol and isn’t governed by one person or institution, it isn’t inherently political.

Sure, the Trump administration has taken a pro-Bitcoin stance, which may be offputting to those on the political left, but that doesn’t mean Bitcoin doesn’t facilitate notions like financial inclusion, an issue that Liberal politicians tend to support.

So, if your politics are more aligned with Liberal ideology, be sure to check out the work of The Progressive Bitcoiner nonprofit as well as Jason Maier’s A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin.

And if you find yourself politically homeless but still a proponent for human rights as they’re enabled by Bitcoin, be sure to learn more about what the Human Rights Foundation is doing via its Financial Freedom division and subscribe to its Financial Freedom newsletter.

Bitcoin is a tool for all human beings — those across the spectrum of the political right and left — and it’s high time that this message becomes more widespread.

This post Bitcoin Transcends the Left-Right Political Divide — It’s a Tool for Human Rights first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Frank Corva.

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Democratic lawmakers in Delaware last week performed what has become an annual legislative ritual by introducing measures that would legalize recreational marijuana.

And, as per recent tradition, their biggest obstacle remains the most senior member of their own state party. 

The Delaware News Journal reports that members of the state House of Representatives introduced a pair of bills on Friday “to legalize and create a recreational marijuana industry in Delaware, setting up a likely fight within the Democratic Party this legislative session.” 

The anticipated intra-party feud centers around Democratic Gov. John Carney, who has long been opposed to marijuana legalization and has stymied efforts by Democrats in the legislature to end the prohibition on pot. 

Last year, Carney vetoed a bill that would have legalized recreational pot in the state. 

Despite holding a majority in each chamber of the state General Assembly, Democratic lawmakers were unable to override Carney’s veto.

“[The legalization bill] would, among other things, remove all penalties for possession by a person 21 years of age or older of one ounce or less of marijuana and ensure that there are no criminal or civil penalties for transfers without remuneration of one ounce or less of marijuana between persons who are 21 years of age or older,” Carney said in a statement following his veto.

“I recognize the positive effect marijuana can have for people with certain health conditions, and for that reason, I continue to support the medical marijuana industry in Delaware,” he continued. “I supported decriminalization of marijuana because I agree that individuals should not be imprisoned solely for the possession and private use of a small amount of marijuana—and today, thanks to Delaware’s decriminalization law, they are not.”

“That said, I do not believe that promoting or expanding the use of recreational marijuana is in the best interests of the state of Delaware, especially our young people,” Carney added. “Questions about the long-term health and economic impacts of recreational marijuana use, as well as serious law enforcement concerns, remain unresolved.”

Democrats who are backing the two bills introduced in the state House last week are hopeful that Carney will eventually come around.

“My hope is that with continued open dialogue with the governor’s office, that will help alleviate a veto,” Democratic state House Rep. Ed Osienski, one of the sponsors of the legislation, told the Delaware News Journal. “I have more support from my members … for a veto override, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

According to the outlet, a “Carney spokeswoman said Friday that the governor’s views on marijuana have not changed.”

According to the Delaware News Journal, the bill dedicated to removing all penalties for possession would “require a simple majority or 21 votes.”

The other bill “would create a framework to regulate the growth, sale and possession of weed,” essentially treating pot like alcohol, and would require “a three-fifths vote because it deals with revenue and taxation,” the Delaware News Journal reports.

The measures also include social equity provisions aimed at enhancing opportunities in the new marijuana industry to individuals from communities who have been historically targeted by anti-drug policies.

The News Journal has more details on the two proposals:

“Delawareans would buy marijuana from a licensed retail marijuana store. The bill would allow for up to 30 retail licenses to be distributed within 16 months of the legislation going into effect. The process will be competitive, with prospective retailers being rewarded for providing good salaries and benefits and hiring a diverse workforce.”

The post Delaware Lawmakers Renew Effort To Legalize Pot appeared first on High Times.