After Trump stepped back into the White House, he rolled out a wave of pro-crypto policies that pushed Ethereum into the spotlight. It went from being just another digital asset to one of the biggest winners of Washington’s new attitude toward crypto.Ethereum’s ride in 2025 and 2026 has been anything but smooth. We’ve seen new stablecoin laws, a much friendlier regulatory environment and a president who owns Ether himself.
Together, those changes pulled serious institutional money back into Ethereum’s ecosystem. On Binance’s ETH price USD tracker, Ether stood at $2,688.91 as of September 26, up just 0.71% for the day, with a market cap of $328.3 billion. That’s still a long way off from its all-time high of $4,953.73. But the regulatory backdrop driving Ethereum right now doesn’t look anything like what we saw four years ago.
What crypto policies did Trump sign?
Trump’s biggest win for the crypto world is the GENIUS Act, a stablecoin law he signed in July 2025. This sets up a regulatory framework for stablecoins that track the value of underlying assets like the U.S. dollar, according to official records from Congress. During the signing ceremony, Trump said the law would lock in America’s dominance in global finance and crypto tech, according to the Hill.
This single piece of legislation meant more to Ethereum than just about anything else out of D.C. Most dollar-pegged stablecoins run on Ethereum. According to Binance, roughly 70% of stablecoin volume moves through Ethereum’s network. Passing a law that legitimizes stablecoins also legitimizes Ethereum’s main use case.
Trump didn’t stop there. In March 2025, he announced on Truth Social that a U.S. crypto reserve would include Solana, Cardano, XRP, Ethereum and Bitcoin. That put ETH alongside Bitcoin in federal reserve plans for the first time. Fast forward a year, and Trump’s team rolled out a national cyber strategy that specifically focused on securing cryptocurrencies and blockchain, according to a document posted on the White House website. By March 2026, the SEC and CFTC put out a joint interpretation that spelled out how existing securities laws apply to crypto. For the first time, they listed Ethereum next to Bitcoin, XRP, Solana and others as a digital commodity, according to official records from SEC. That finally resolved years of uncertainty about how regulators would treat Ethereum.
What has Trump said about Ethereum, specifically?
Trump talks much more about Bitcoin, but his actions say a lot. Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure showed he personally held at least $100 million across Bitcoin and Ethereum. That raises obvious conflict-of-interest questions, since he is both the president and a major investor.
It also helps explain why his administration keeps showing up at industry events. In August 2026, Trump brought around two dozen crypto executives to the White House. The heads of several major exchanges and trading apps came, and SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC Chair Mike Selig were there too. Trump pushed Congress to end the deadlock on the CLARITY Act during that meeting, according to Reuters. Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone, who attended, said the administration had no plans to slow down: Its sights are set on making the U.S. the world’s crypto capital, according to Fox Business.
How has business opportunity changed around Ethereum?
With clearer regulations, doors that were closed for years have finally opened. Banks that previously steered clear of stablecoins are suddenly on board. Now, big names like JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America are signaling interest in creating their own bank-backed stablecoins, most of which would run on Ethereum’s infrastructure, according to Reuters. That’s a huge shift from a few years ago, when banks were wary of getting involved with crypto at all.
The Coast News looked in September 2026 at what blockchain could change in San Diego real estate, from smart contracts to title records, a sign that the Ethereum-style tools Washington is now regulating could show up in North County home sales too.
The run-up around the GENIUS Act’s signing showed just how quickly things can change when the rules get settled. Ethereum ETFs saw net inflows of $726.74 million in a single day during the week the law passed. ETH’s price jumped 45% over just two weeks around the signing, according to The Block. The hype eventually settled, and ETH is back at $2,688.91 as of late September, according to Binance. Still, the business case for building on Ethereum, whether it’s bank-issued stablecoins or tokenized investment funds, looks far sturdier than it did before the rules were written.
What could move Ether next?
The Federal Reserve raised its target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point, to 3.75% to 4.00%, on September 16, 2026, according to the Federal Open Market Committee’s statement. It was the first increase since July 2023, and the committee approved it by a 12–0 vote.
Shares of Coinbase and Circle each fell about 10% on September 15, 2026, after the Senate vote, and Bitcoin briefly dropped below $75,000, according to Cointelegraph.
