WASHINGTON, D.C. — Within hours of the announcement that he’d started as the crypto counselor for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, former Galaxy Digital lawyer Tyler Williams was addressing a private digital assets event in Washington, D.C., telling the crowd that helping Congress get stablecoin legislation across the goal line is a worthy opening effort.
“Be as supportive as we can to our friends in Congress” who are working on stablecoin policy, Williams advised attendees at the Chainlink-hosted event, arguing that getting those backbone dollar-denominated tokens on legal footing would be “a very good use case” for industry allies in Washington to push. “If we can put a regulatory wrapper around it in a way that allows states and bank regulators and all the ecosystems to live in the same rulebook to be an issuer, I think that’s a pretty good outcome for D.C.”
Meanwhile, Williams, who worked as a regulatory lawyer for Galaxy, indicated he’d actually been in the role for a few weeks and said “the fact that I have a job at the U.S. Treasury Department” is an excellent sign for the industry.
Rep. Bryan Steil, the Wisconsin Republican who is now at the helm of the digital assets subcommittee in the House Financial Services Committee, said at the same Wednesday evening event that “we’ve really turned a corner.”
The lawmaker said the U.S. needs to “outcompete the rest of the world” on nurturing digital assets, and he predicted the bipartisan energy that saw dozens of Democrats support the last session’s crypto market-structure legislation, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), will “continue to grow.”
Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the digital assets subcommittee in the House Financial Services Committee (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)
That came as a welcome sentiment to Chainlink’s co-founder, Sergey Nazarov, who said he’s seeing a “very productive mindset” in Washington.
Williams referenced the work led by David Sacks, the crypto czar appointed by President Donald Trump, and he said, “I see all the pieces of the puzzle moving in one direction, which is to advance the U.S. leadership on digital issues.”
While he noted agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission already moving on new initiatives, he said “we have our hands full” inside his department.
So many aspects of the Treasury’s jurisdiction fall across the industry, including tax policy, sanctions, money-laundering oversight and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), he said, but a team there is “eager to work on this issue.
“I think they’re excited about the prospect of having a refreshed view from the government,” said Williams, who is marking his second stint in the department, having worked there during Trump’s first term.
Read More: Stablecoins Take Center Stage at Senate’s First Digital Assets Subcommittee Hearing
