President Donald Trump is heading to Beijing for a face-to-face summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The agenda covers trade imbalances, technology rivalry, and fentanyl precursor flows. But underneath the diplomatic talking points sits a quieter contest that crypto investors should be watching closely.
The US has been moving aggressively on stablecoin regulation. Recent enforcement actions have targeted issuers like Tether, partly in coordination with broader efforts to crack down on illicit fentanyl-related financial flows. When Washington talks about fentanyl precursors coming from China, it is also talking about the payment rails those transactions use, and stablecoins have been flagged as one of them.
China banned most onshore crypto trading and mining years ago, effectively shutting down what was once the world’s largest Bitcoin mining ecosystem. Beijing has been pushing its central bank digital currency, the e-CNY (digital yuan), as a state-controlled alternative to decentralized cryptocurrencies, while China’s blockchain initiatives continue to expand under tight government oversight.
Trump has historically been skeptical, even dismissive, of Bitcoin and crypto more broadly. Yet his administration oversaw a period of significant institutional development for the space, during which major banks began offering custody services, futures products matured, and regulatory frameworks started taking shape.
Mainstream coverage of the summit, including from Fox News, has not explicitly tied the agenda to cryptocurrencies. But structural decisions made around AI export controls, financial surveillance, and cross-border payment systems will set the playing field for crypto’s next chapter. The US has restricted chip exports to China, and China has accelerated domestic semiconductor development.
China’s crypto mining ban reshuffled the global hashrate map, pushing operations to the US, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. If the summit produces friction rather than cooperation, expect renewed interest in the thesis that stablecoins like USDC serve as instruments of dollar hegemony in digital markets, and that Beijing’s e-CNY is the counter-play.
No Comment! Be the first one.