Crypto World
Ripple CEO Confirms White House Meeting between Crypto, Banking Reps
Update (Feb. 19 at 7:21 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a statement from the Crypto Council for Innovation.
The White House has held another meeting between representatives from the cryptocurrency and banking industries on a market structure bill under consideration in the US Senate, seeking to iron-out differences on stablecoin yield provisions, among other issues.
In a Thursday Fox News interview, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the company’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, attended the meeting with White House officials earlier in the day. The CEO’s comments came after unconfirmed reports that the Trump administration would follow its Feb. 10 meeting on the CLARITY Act, a bill to establish digital asset market structure. That meeting did not result in a deal on stablecoins.
Passed by the US House of Representatives in July, the CLARITY Act has seen several delays while moving through the Senate and its relevant committees. These included two government shutdowns — the longest one in the country’s history spanned 43 days in 2025 — concerns from Democratic lawmakers on conflicts of interest, and groups pushing for provisions on decentralized finance, tokenized equities and stablecoin yield.
The meeting occurred a day after policymakers, including CFTC Chair Michael Selig and two US senators, and representatives from the crypto industry met at US President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club to attend a forum hosted by World Liberty Financial, the company founded by the president’s sons and others. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno said at the event that he expected the CLARITY Act to make it through Congress and be ready to be signed into law “by April.”
Related: US CLARITY Act to pass ‘hopefully by April’: Senator Bernie Moreno
Cointelegraph reached out to Ripple for comment on Alderoty’s presence at the meeting, but had not received a response at the time of publication. White House crypto advisers Patrick Witt and David Sacks had not publicly commented on the event at the time of publication.
In a statement shared with Cointelegraph, Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim said the Thursday discussion “built upon previous meetings to establish a framework that serves American consumers while reinforcing US competitiveness,” describing it as “constructive.”
Market structure bill awaits markup by Senate Banking panel
Although the Senate Agriculture Committee voted to advance its version of a digital asset market structure bill in January, another committee crucial to the legislation’s passage has stalled following stated opposition from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Armstrong has objected to provisions that would restrict rewards paid on stablecoin holdings and warned the bill could weaken the CFTC’s role in favor of broader SEC authority.
The Senate Banking Committee had been scheduled to mark up its market structure bill in January, but delayed the event indefinitely after Armstrong said the exchange could not support the legislation as written, citing concerns about tokenized equities. As of Thursday, the committee had not rescheduled the markup.
Magazine: Is China hoarding gold so yuan becomes global reserve instead of USD?