US Bars Fed CBDC to 2030, Illinois Adds 0.2% Crypto Tax, Fairshake Wins Alabama

Crypto News

US lawmakers have moved to freeze the Federal Reserve out of the digital-currency race, attaching a provision to a sweeping housing and transportation package, the so-called 21st Century Housing and Roads Act, that bars the central bank from issuing a central bank digital currency before 2030. The measure crystallizes years of political resistance rooted in financial-privacy concerns, effectively delaying any direct digital dollar. Observers note the freeze hands more room to privately issued stablecoins and traditional payment rails. It also arrives as China advances its digital yuan and the European Union develops a digital euro, sharpening questions about Washington's standing in the global race for state-backed digital money.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju pushed back on the idea that altcoins are finished, arguing instead that only narrative-driven tokens have lost their footing. In his view, projects with working business models and measurable revenue are the ones likely to endure, while issuing a token alone no longer attracts capital. He grouped survivors into three buckets: ecosystem tokens tied to global internet firms such as BNB and TON, revenue-generating decentralized finance protocols including established automated market makers, and tokenized real-world assets. The shift, he suggested, reflects a more selective post-spot-Bitcoin era where capital chases usage rather than story.

Crypto's political clout returned to the spotlight after Republican Barry Moore won Alabama's Senate primary runoff with roughly 56% of the vote, defeating former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson. The industry super PAC Fairshake poured more than $12 million into the race, its largest single congressional outlay of the 2025 midterm cycle. Moore, who backed every major crypto bill during his House tenure, now becomes the party nominee for November in a deeply Republican state, positioning him as a favorite. A Fairshake spokesperson framed the result as another pro-innovation Senate candidate advanced, vowing to keep building the largest crypto-friendly legislative bloc in history.

The Alabama victory underscores how heavily capitalized the sector's political machine has become. Federal Election Commission filings show Fairshake and its affiliated committees held roughly $164 million in cash at the end of April, funded primarily by Coinbase, a16z Crypto and Ripple. The committee, which backed more than 50 pro-crypto candidates across both parties last cycle, treated Alabama as a counterweight to a costly setback in Illinois, where it spent around $10 million against Democrat Juliana Stratton without success. The mixed record illustrates both the reach and the limits of crypto money in shaping US races heading into the general election.

Illinois delivered a sharper regulatory blow as Governor JB Pritzker signed a $55.9 billion state budget imposing a 0.2% privilege tax on crypto transactions, despite industry veto appeals. The measure makes Illinois the first state to tax digital-asset users regardless of income, gain or profit, while requiring registration and new reporting from digital-asset brokers operating there. Crypto Council for Innovation and the Digital Chamber warned the levy singles out digital assets purely for their settlement technology, with no equivalent state tax on stocks, bonds or derivatives. The package targets over $800 million in additional revenue for fiscal 2027, and analysts caution its reach could extend to out-of-state firms.

In Dubai, Tether signed a memorandum of understanding with the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre to collaborate on tokenization and blockchain education. The agreement spans advisory services, workshops, pilot programs and training initiatives for the DMCC's corporate network, with tokenization, the conversion of real or digital assets into blockchain tokens, at its center. As issuer of USDT, the largest stablecoin in circulation, Tether plans to lend expertise to the DMCC Crypto Centre through hackathons, forums and consultancy. The DMCC hosts more than 26,000 businesses, placing the partnership squarely within Dubai's broader push to anchor its digital-economy ambitions in blockchain infrastructure.

Taken together, these developments trace a single arc: regulation and political capital, not price speculation, are now the dominant forces reshaping crypto's trajectory. Washington is curbing a state digital dollar while the industry buys influence in Senate races; Illinois taxes settlement technology even as Dubai courts it. COINOTAG's aggregate market data frames the backdrop, with the Fear and Greed Index at 22, deep in Extreme Fear, Bitcoin dominance at 69.8% as capital concentrates in majors, and total crypto market capitalization near $1.88 trillion. The FEC filings and the signed Illinois budget are primary-source confirmation that the policy contest, increasingly fought across statehouses and Congress, will define the next cycle more than any single rally.