Coinbase policy chief expects speedy approval of crypto laws following Trump’s victory

Published

12 months ago

December 2, 2024

admin

Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, speaking onstage during the 2024 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York Times Square on Sep. 24, 2024 in New York City.

John Lamparski | Getty Images for Concordia Summit

LONDON — Coinbase’s top policy executive expects the United States to rapidly regulate the cryptocurrency industry once Donald Trump becomes president.

Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, told CNBC he sees crypto legislation making its way through Congress “fairly quickly” after the Republican president-elect — who ran on a notoriously pro-crypto policy platform — enters the White House.

The Republican Party also secured a governing trifecta, gaining control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This, Shirzad suggested, should make the process of approving crypto laws even smoother.

“We have the most pro-crypto Congress ever [in] history, we have an extraordinarily pro-crypto president coming into office,” Shirzad told CNBC last week at an event organized by the U.K. division of Coinbase-backed advocacy group Stand With Crypto.

“I think the combination should finally allow the 50 million Americans who own crypto to have their interests and voice heard in policy.”

The post-election crypto euphoria is spilling over to other market areas, says Barclays' Pascale

His comments come as two key pieces of crypto-related legislation make their way through Congress.

One is the Republican-sponsored Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, which aims to establish a legal framework for digital assets. That bill passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year.

The other is the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, a bill that seeks to establish a regulatory regime to license issuers of stablecoins — tokens that are pegged to the value of fiat currencies like the dollar. The stablecoin bill has not yet passed a House vote.

Shirzad told CNBC he’s “optimistic” the legislation will get passed, but noted there’s only a “small” chance the crypto legislation is considered in the so-called “lame duck” post-election period.

Even if Congress doesn’t give the crypto laws a green light this year, Shirzad expects “significant movement and hopefully passage of both market structure legislation and stablecoin legislation” in 2025.

Crypto’s lobbying power

Trump’s election win marked a major victory for the crypto industry — but it also highlighted the power of the crypto lobbying machine.

Crypto-related political action committees (PACs) — organizations that pool together donations from members to fund campaigns — and other groups tied to the industry raised more than $245 million, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Meanwhile, the Coinbase-backed Stand With Crypto Alliance developed a grading system to determine how for or against crypto House and Senate candidates were. Almost 300 pro-crypto lawmakers will take seats in the House and Senate, according to Stand With Crypto.

Last month, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler announced that he will step down on Jan. 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration. Trump had long promised to replace Gensler, who has taken an aggressive approach to crypto oversight in his time as SEC chair.

Shirzad said he can’t predict who Trump’s SEC pick will be, but said the president-elect is “very good in picking people who share his vision, and he had a very comprehensive platform on crypto.”

“I think as long as he picks somebody who’s a change agent and who shares his shares his vision, I think it’ll be good for the U.S., good for society, good for the people that own crypto,” he added.

Technology

Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

Published

2 hours ago

November 21, 2025

admin

$Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'$

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here: