Tyler Williams, a former sector lawyer appointed as Treasury Secretary Bessent's cryptocurrency adviser, noted that the department has a significant amount of internal work to do.

Updated Feb 27, 2025 18:54 UTC Published Feb 27, 2025 16:25 UTC

What you need to know:

• Tyler Williams wasted no time in sharing encouraging messages for the crypto industry immediately after being appointed as the US Treasury Department's Digital Asset Specialist.
• He and Congressman Brian Steil, a key U.S. cryptocurrency lawmaker, agreed on the need for stablecoin legislation.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shortly after announcing his role as a cryptocurrency adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, former Galaxy Digital attorney Tyler Williams spoke at a private digital asset event in Washington, D.C., telling attendees that Congress' support for advancing stablecoin legislation is a worthy start to the effort.

“Support our colleagues in Congress” who are working on stablecoins, Williams advised attendees at a Chainlink-hosted event, emphasizing that putting these dollar tokens on a legal footing would be a “great use case” for industry partners in Washington. “If we can put this in a regulatory framework so that states, banking regulators, and all the ecosystems can operate under a single set of rules for issuers, I think that would be a very good outcome for D.C.”

At the same time, Williams, who worked as a regulatory lawyer at Galaxy, noted that he had actually been in the job for a few weeks, adding that “the fact that I have a job at the U.S. Treasury Department” was a great sign for the industry.

Rep. Brian Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who currently chairs the House Financial Services Committee's digital assets subcommittee, said at the same event Wednesday night that “we've really reached a turning point.”

The lawmaker emphasized that the U.S. needs to “outperform the rest of the world” in digital assets and predicted that the bipartisan support that saw dozens of Democrats back the cryptocurrency market framework bill last session, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century (FIT21) Act, “will continue to grow.”

This was welcomed by Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, who said he saw a “very productive mood” in Washington.