US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Ripple’s Swell conference in New York on Tuesday 27 October that dollar stablecoins will become a source of funding for the Treasury and a new way to keep the dollar on top, according to CoinDesk and American Banker. Speaking on stage with Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse, he called Congress’s failure to pass the Clarity Act a disappointment and said the Treasury could work with the SEC and the CFTC to set crypto rules through the agencies instead.
The speech gave a direction, not a programme. Neither outlet reports a figure from Bessent on how much stablecoins could add to demand for US government debt, and American Banker writes that he did not predict how much or when. No date, executive order or new Treasury rule came with the remarks. When Coindaro checked the Treasury’s press releases at 06:00 UTC on 28 October, the newest item was dated 22 October, with no transcript, remarks or readout of the Swell session, and we found no video of it. The quotes below are therefore as reported by CoinDesk and American Banker, and each one is attributed to the outlet where we read it.
Bessent on stablecoins: a “technology umbrella” for the dollar
Bessent’s main argument was that American power abroad rests on more than its armed forces. “We will keep our military umbrella, but I think more and more it’s becoming a technology umbrella,” he said, in CoinDesk’s report. He placed digital assets in the same race with China as artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
Digital assets, he said, “are going to be no different”. In the fuller version CoinDesk printed, he went on: “we are going to win in the digital asset stack, and that’s gonna continue to fortify the [U.S.] dollar.” He also said more than 90% of stablecoins are backed by US dollars, a figure CoinDesk reports in its own words rather than as a direct quote.
He then turned to users outside the United States. “I think we are opening up new markets all around the world,” Bessent said (CoinDesk), arguing, in CoinDesk’s summary, that stablecoins would not just replace dollars people already hold but reach savers in emerging markets who want protection from a falling local currency.
His example was Brazil. American Banker reports that investors moved out of the real after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won re-election on Sunday 25 October, and quotes Bessent: “Yesterday we had the single biggest move in the history of the Brazilian Real.” That record is his claim; Coindaro has not checked it against exchange-rate data. For small holders, he said, being able to move instantly into a dollar asset protects them where inflation is high.
American Banker also carries two lines that CoinDesk does not. “Everyone likes to predict the end of dollar dominance,” Bessent said, before arguing that each new development so far had strengthened the dollar’s position instead. And he presented privately issued stablecoins backed by US regulation as “the answer to central bank digital currencies”, a sentence that reads very differently in Frankfurt than in New York.
Why Bessent calls stablecoins a source of funding for the Treasury
The funding claim is the one with a mechanism behind it. “I think it’s gonna be an important source of funding for the Treasury,” Bessent said in CoinDesk’s transcription; American Banker renders the same sentence as “it’s going to be an important source of funding for the Treasury.” The logic is that a dollar stablecoin must be backed by safe assets, and the largest issuers keep much of those reserves in short-dated US Treasury bills. If issuers keep that mix, more tokens in circulation means more Treasury debt bought. Bessent put a condition on it, in American Banker’s account: once the US has a regulatory regime that respects the rule of law and gives holders “good fundamentals”, he expects “a big uptick in stablecoins backed by our assets”.
Tether, the issuer of USDT and the biggest of them, gives the scale. In its second-quarter 2026 release of 31 July, Tether reported total assets of $187.75 billion against liabilities of $183.64 billion at 30 June, leaving excess reserves of $4.11 billion, with about $184.6 billion of USDT issued. The release calls the company “one of the world’s largest buyers and holders of U.S. Treasuries” but gives no Treasury figure on that page. The split comes from ForkLog’s reading of the BDO attestation, published on 1 August: $114.96 billion of US Treasury bills and $25.62 billion of reverse repurchase agreements.
| Tether, as of 30 June 2026 | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total assets | $187.75 billion | Tether release, 31 July |
| Total liabilities | $183.64 billion | Tether release, 31 July |
| Excess reserves | $4.11 billion (from $8.23 billion in Q1) | Tether release; Q1 figure via ForkLog |
| USDT issued | about $184.6 billion | Tether release, 31 July |
| US Treasury bills | $114.96 billion | BDO report, as relayed by ForkLog |
| Reverse repurchase agreements | $25.62 billion | BDO report, as relayed by ForkLog |
Those figures are four months old. Tether’s third-quarter attestation was not on its news page on the morning of 28 October; last year’s came around the end of October, so the next set of numbers may arrive within days.
The market has also moved the wrong way for a simple growth story. Stablecoin supply stood at $302.4 billion on DefiLlama at 06:54 UTC on 26 October, $13.1 billion below its 17 May peak of $315.5 billion, as we reported in our look at the stablecoin supply drop since May. The blockchain that runs exactly as written when it is called, holding and moving funds according to its code, without an intermediary able to change the outcome.">smart contract holding reserves of two or more tokens, supplied by users, that a decentralized exchange uses to execute trades automatically at a price set by a formula.">pool Bessent is counting on is, for now, slightly smaller than it was in the spring.
The Clarity Act failed 49-50; Bessent wants regulators to fill the gap
On market structure, Bessent spoke of what Congress did not do. CoinDesk reports that he called the failure of the Clarity Act a disappointment and said the Treasury could work with the SEC and the CFTC to advance oversight through agency action. “At Treasury, we have a lot of convening powers,” he said, describing the two market regulators as “great partners” in building a framework that, in CoinDesk’s paraphrase, could serve as a model for other countries. American Banker’s version is that, absent legislation, regulators could “convene” to build a dependable framework for digital assets.
That is a statement of intent. No report mentions a deadline, a joint rule, a working group or a named plan, CoinDesk points out that rules adopted by regulators lack the permanence of legislation. In practice, a later administration can rewrite an agency rule without a vote in Congress.
The bill’s status explains the change of route. On 15 September 2026 a procedural vote on the bill failed in the Senate, 49 to 50, American Banker reported. Republican senators Josh Hawley, Susan Collins and Jerry Moran voted no, as did Thom Tillis, whose vote lets Republicans bring the package back to the floor, and the bill’s Democratic negotiators. Talks had broken down over ethics rules meant to stop officials and their families from profiting from crypto, while banks opposed the bill’s treatment of stablecoin yield, which they fear would pull deposits from small lenders. American Banker wrote that the vote most likely ends the push for this Congress.
The calendar is tight. The House passed the bill (H.R. 3633) on 17 July 2025 by 294 votes to 134, according to law firm Orrick. The Senate is not scheduled to resume legislative business until 9 November, after the 3 November midterm elections, according to Baker Botts, and a bill not passed by the end of this Congress would have to be reintroduced in the new Congress that meets in January 2027. How the SEC and the CFTC have been writing rules in the meantime, from the joint interpretation of 17 March 2026 to the SEC’s proposals on offerings and custody, is in our analysis of US crypto rules after the Clarity Act stalled.
Debanking: the question Garlinghouse put to him
Garlinghouse brought up his own experience. He said he “was personally debanked” and asked whether the administration had “moved past that chapter”, according to American Banker. Bessent’s answer, which CoinDesk and American Banker both quote word for word, was: “I think we can set up regulatory best practices, guardrails that will prevent that from happening again.” He also said the Clarity Act would have helped. “It would have prevented that from happening again,” he said in American Banker’s account. American Banker writes that he declined to say through which mechanisms; CoinDesk names none either.
GENIUS Act rules: one is final, the Treasury’s is still a proposal
The funding argument rests on the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law signed on 18 July 2025, and its rules are not all written. The law takes effect on 18 January 2027.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was first: it published its final rule on 21 October, effective 18 January 2027, with a looser reserve mix than proposed and a case-by-case review of rewards paid through partners, as detailed in our report on the OCC’s final GENIUS Act rule. Bessent was quoted in that release calling the Act “a watershed moment in American finance”.
The Treasury’s own rule is still at the proposal stage. It appeared in the Federal Register on 18 August 2026, the comment period closed on 19 October, and no date has been given for a final version. The FDIC proposed its own rule for the issuers it supervises in April 2026. On 26 October the OCC invited community banks to apply as stablecoin issuers, although applications are not yet open. Bessent is promoting the benefits of a framework that his own department has not finished writing.
Europe hears the same dollar argument from the other side
For readers in the euro area, Bessent’s speech is the mirror image of a debate at the European Central Bank. On 8 May 2026, at the Banco de España LatAm Economic Forum, ECB President Christine Lagarde said euro stablecoins were “not an efficient way” to strengthen the euro’s international role, Decrypt reported. She also said: “It is no longer about whether stablecoins should exist, but whether jurisdictions can afford to be without them.” Lagarde noted that the US administration presents the GENIUS Act as a way to secure the dollar’s global dominance. In Decrypt’s account, she acknowledged a global stablecoin market worth over $317 billion, nearly 98% of it denominated in dollars; the outlet does not quote her giving those numbers directly.
Bessent’s line about private stablecoins being “the answer to central bank digital currencies” lands directly on the ECB’s main project. Board member Piero Cipollone said in an interview with Milano Finanza, published by the ECB on 24 October, that individual holdings of a digital euro would be capped but payments would not, and that seven of the 36 pilot providers are Italian; the ECB can only decide once the EU regulation is adopted, which it hopes will happen by the end of 2026. The details are in our piece on Cipollone and the digital euro pilot.
In the EU, dollar and euro stablecoins offered to the public fall under MiCA, supervised in France by the AMF and in Italy by Consob and the Banca d’Italia. We found no European official’s response to Bessent’s remarks as of the morning of 28 October.
What a stablecoin reserve is, in short
A payment stablecoin is a token meant to be worth one dollar (or one euro), redeemable with its issuer. The issuer keeps reserves at least equal to the tokens in circulation, mostly in cash, bank deposits and short US government debt. The interest on those reserves is the issuer’s business model, which is why Tether can report a $1.5 billion operating profit in a quarter while holders earn nothing directly. The difference between the two largest tokens, Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, is explained in our guide to USDT vs USDC.
Dates to watch after Bessent’s Swell remarks
Swell continues on 28 and 29 October. The Federal Reserve announces its rate decision today, 28 October, at 18:00 UTC. XRP, the token most tied to Ripple, traded near $1.32 at 06:00 UTC, up about 2% over 24 hours according to Coindaro’s market data; we found no price move attributable to Bessent’s remarks.
After that come Tether’s third-quarter attestation, expected around the end of October if it follows last year’s timing, the US midterm elections on 3 November, the Senate’s return on 9 November, and the GENIUS Act’s entry into force on 18 January 2027. Whether the Treasury actually convenes the SEC and the CFTC, and on what, is the open question Bessent left on stage.