The first federal statute covering cryptocurrencies now has President Trump's signature. The House passed the Genius Act – short for "Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins" – on Thursday in a bipartisan 308-122 vote, a month after the Senate approved the bill by a 68-30 margin. Trump signed it at the White House on Friday afternoon. The idea with stablecoins is to avoid the roller-coaster ride of older cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin by pegging their value to either a traditional government-issued currency or some other real-world asset. The measure restricts the issuance of stablecoins to a set of authorized firms: subsidiaries of existing banks, non-bank firms permitted by federal or state regulators, or foreign firms that the Treasury Department determines are subject to comparable regulations in their home countries. All of these firms must hold reserves backing their issued stablecoins on "an at least 1 to 1 basis." The law also prohibits stablecoin ...