The U.S. Senate passed a sweeping housing affordability bill Monday night — and tucked inside its pages is a provision that could permanently reshape America’s digital currency landscape: a formal ban on a Federal Reserve-issued central bank digital currency through the end of 2030.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5, with Republican leaders insisting the CBDC restriction ride along with one of the most bipartisan bills in years. The House was poised to fast-track a vote as early as Tuesday, putting the measure on a direct path to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.
The bill’s language is sweeping: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System or any Federal Reserve bank may not issue, create, or circulate a central bank digital currency — directly or through any intermediary — through December 31, 2030.
It explicitly shields private stablecoins, carving out any “open, permissionless, and private” dollar-denominated asset.
Trump set the political foundation for the ban in January 2025, signing an executive order barring his administration from any CBDC activity, warning it would threaten “the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States”.
New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell, has called a U.S. CBDC a “bad policy choice” — making the Fed and the White House, for once, aligned.
The crypto market, meanwhile, isn’t celebrating. Bitcoin was trading near $62,000 Tuesday morning — down more than 3.7% on the day — as a Nasdaq tech selloff bled into digital assets.
BTC has now lost roughly half its value since setting an all-time high above $125,000 in July 2025, and some analysts say the pain may not be over: at least one widely-followed technical indicator is pointing to a potential additional drop of 15% or more before a bottom forms.
Additional crypto Senate legislation in the works
The CBDC ban is the latest piece in a three-part legislative puzzle the Trump-era Congress has been assembling.
In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act — the first federal stablecoin law in U.S. history — requiring issuers to hold one-to-one reserves, make monthly disclosures, and obtain federal licensing. The law essentially gave private digital dollars a legal green light at the same moment the government’s version was being blocked.
The third and most complex piece is still pending. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the industry’s long-sought framework for determining when a crypto token is a security versus a commodity — cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14 and landed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1.
Galaxy Research has put the odds of passage this year as high as 60%, but the clock is running out.
The bill needs at least seven Democratic votes to clear the Senate floor, and senators must act before August — when the legislative calendar effectively shuts down ahead of midterm campaigning.
Senator Bill Hagerty told Fox Business on June 18 that he hoped the Clarity Act could clear the floor in the weeks ahead. Without it, a key question — who actually regulates crypto, the SEC or the CFTC — remains unanswered heading into an election cycle.
If Trump signs the housing bill this week, it will mark the most concrete federal action against a government digital dollar yet. The message from Washington is becoming harder to misread: private crypto has a seat at the table, and the Fed’s version of a digital dollar does not.
