Brian Armstrong met with Trump before the president slammed banks over crypto bill

CoinDesk was able to confirm the meeting between the US president and the Coinbase CEO took place as Politico initially reported.

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What to know:

• President Donald Trump met privately with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shortly before publicly accusing banks of trying to undermine the pro-crypto GENIUS Act and urging passage of the Clarity Act.
• The meeting, first reported by Politico, came as Trump posted on Truth Social that banks "need to make a good deal with the Crypto Industry" to advance stalled digital asset legislation on Capitol Hill.
• The crypto market structure bill has been held up amid a clash between banks, which warn that interest-bearing stablecoins could erode deposits and lending, and crypto firms, which argue the GENIUS Act safely allows consumers to earn rewards on their stablecoin holdings.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong met behind closed doors shortly before the president said bankers are trying to undermine the GENIUS Act in a Truth Social post, CoinDesk confirmed.

"The U.S. needs to get Market Structure done, ASAP. Americans should earn more money on their money," Trump said in the post on Tuesday. "The Banks are hitting record profits, and we are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto Agenda that will end up going to China, and other Countries if we don’t get The Clarity Act taken care of."

Politico first reported the meeting between Armstrong and Trump. Afterward, the president publicly backed Coinbase’s “position in [the] ongoing lobbying clash with banks that has derailed a major cryptocurrency bill.”

The news outlet cited “two people with knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss a closed-door matter” as the source of the meeting between Trump and Armstrong. It also said it was unclear what they both discussed during the meeting.

However, it reiterated, “it came just before Trump wrote on social media that banks ‘need to make a good deal with the Crypto Industry’ in order to advance digital asset legislation that has stalled on Capitol Hill.”

The White House and Coinbase have not responded to a CoinDesk request for comment.

The market structure bill has been stalled since the Senate Banking Committee lawmakers were set to debate and vote on it. The point holding back the passage of the crypto bill is that banks argue stablecoin interest rates could affect bank deposits and therefore, particularly, their lending ability. Crypto exchanges say individuals should be able to earn rewards on their stablecoins holdings, which they say the GENIUS Act allows.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Tuesday said that stablecoin issuers that pay interest on customer balances should be regulated like banks. Patrick Witt, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, pushed back against Dimon, saying “the deceit here is that it is not the paying of yield on a balance per se that necessitates bank-like regulations, but rather the lending out or rehypothecation of the dollars that make up the underlying balance.” Witt also said the GENIUS Act “explicitly forbids stablecoin issuers from doing the latter. Stablecoins ≠ Deposits.”

Crypto-related stocks, including COIN, jumped Wednesday amid a broader surge in crypto prices. COIN climbed above $200, seeing its highest price since late January.

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