US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used an appearance at Ripple's Swell conference to frame stablecoins as a tool for extending the dollar's reach, a position with direct bearing on how euro-denominated stablecoins compete under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. Speaking in conversation with Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse, Bessent said the United States intends to lead on digital assets and that doing so would reinforce the currency's global standing.
"We will win on digital assets, and that will further strengthen the US dollar," Bessent said.
The remark rests on a market fact he cited directly: more than 90 percent of all stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the dollar. That concentration matters for Washington because issuers back their tokens partly by holding US Treasury bonds, a mechanism Bessent linked to government financing needs.
"I think this will be an important source of financing for the Treasury," he said, pointing to the reserve holdings behind dollar-pegged tokens as a growing channel of demand for US debt.
For European stablecoin issuers operating under MiCA's reserve and authorisation requirements, the dynamic underscores a structural challenge: the dollar's near-total dominance of the stablecoin market gives US policy a scale advantage that euro-denominated tokens have yet to approach, regardless of the EU's earlier start in setting a comprehensive legal framework.
Regulation shifts to the agencies
Bessent's comments came against the backdrop of a legislative setback at home. The CLARITY Act, which would have set out a clearer market-structure framework for digital assets, failed to advance in Congress. Bessent called the outcome a disappointment, and said he now intends to rely more heavily on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to push forward further rules for the industry in the absence of new legislation.
He also addressed debanking, the practice of financial institutions cutting off services to crypto companies, saying he wants regulatory agencies to act against it. Bessent said regulatory guardrails should be put in place to prevent crypto firms from losing access to banking services again, an issue that has repeatedly surfaced as a flashpoint between the industry and US banking supervisors.
Taken together, the appearance signalled that the Trump administration's Treasury sees stablecoins less as a narrow payments innovation than as an instrument of monetary statecraft, one it intends to pursue through agency action even where Congress has failed to legislate. For European regulators and issuers tracking the transatlantic competition in digital money, the message was unambiguous: Washington regards dollar dominance in stablecoins as a policy objective, not a byproduct.
