Adrienne Harris, the head of the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), said New York has an “outsized role to play” in the crypto ecosystem, particularly in shaping regulatory frameworks for digital assets.

During a panel on May 14 at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, she said the NY estate is frequently asked to provide guidance on regulators. “With respect to federal regulation and legislation […] members of Congress are often coming to us [NYDFS] asking about our process, about our regulations, about guidance, how they should be thinking about legislation,” Harris said.

Interview with Adrienne Harris (pictured left). Source: Cointelegraph

According to Harris, the NYDFS was “unnecessarily tough” and lacked resources in the past. Now, under her purview, she said the NYDFS is “tough but fair,” noting that the digital currency oversight team has since doubled in size.

Harris took over as superintendent of the NYDFS in September 2021 after spending time working in the educational, nonprofit, and private sectors. In New York State, crypto businesses must either obtain a BitLicense or a limited-purpose trust charter.

“We’ve added nine pieces of regulatory guidance, so it’s still very tough to get a BitLicense or a limited-purpose trust charter,” Harris said. “But I think […] the proof is in the pudding when you see that FTX, Voyager, Celsius, didn’t pass our test and therefore couldn’t do business.”

All three of those crypto companies went bankrupt in 2022. The result was a widespread contagion in the industry and years-long legal proceedings. FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Celsius Network’s Alex Mashinsky were sentenced to 25 and 12 years in prison, respectively. Voyager’s founder, Steven Ehrlich, is facing legal charges for allegedly misleading customers.

Related: NYC Mayor doubles down on crypto push ahead of city summit

Harris ‘hopeful’ for stablecoin legislation

Stablecoin legislation has been a topic at the forefront of many crypto industry advocates in 2025. Recently considered a bipartisan endeavor, it devolved into a dispute on May 8 when Democrats withdrew support for the GENIUS Act over concerns about President Trump’s crypto ventures.

Still, Harris remains “hopeful” Congress will eventually pass stablecoin legislation.

We’ve been working with Congress on all the variations of their crypto and stablecoin legislation now over the last three years almost.

According to Harris, all recent legislation tied to stablecoin regulation has been reviewed by New York officials.

“There isn’t a version of any of those bills, be it House or Senate, R’s or D’s, that don’t come to meet to the team to say, give us your feedback, give us your technical assistance, your insights here,” she said, adding that most of these suggestions have been incorporated into legislations.

The NYDFS, according to Harrus, still wants to be “a state path for crypto companies.”

Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins

Bitfarms clocked a first-quarter net loss of $36 million, widening from a $6 million loss in the same period a year earlier, as the Bitcoin miner pivots from mining to high-performance computing for artificial intelligence applications. 

The miner posted $67 million in sales for the quarter ended March 31, up 33% from the year prior. However, gross profit margin for Bitfarm’s mining operations declined to 43% from 63% year-over-year, the company said in its first quarter earnings release. 

The lower margins reflect pressure from Bitcoin’s (BTC) April 2024 “halving” as well as volatility in Bitcoin’s price. Halvings occur every four years and cut the number of BTC mined per block in half, reducing Bitcoin miners’ profitability. 

In the first quarter of 2025, Bitcoin’s spot price swung from more than $100,000 in January to less than $80,000 in March, according to data from Google Finance. The cryptocurrency trades at more than $103,000 per coin as of March 14. 

Bitfarms’ quarterly operating performance. Source: Bitfarms

Related: Bitcoin mining stocks down after Microsoft scraps data center plans

Pivot to AI

Bitfarms has responded to the changing market conditions by investing in high-performance computing (HPC). It has also expanded its US presence as a hedge against looming trade wars.

“During the quarter, we executed across several key areas in our strategic pivot to the U.S. and HPC,” Bitfarms CEO Ben Gagnon said in a statement.

“The mining business now provides a stable, low-capex and free cash flow foundation for the Company that positions us very well to grow and develop our U.S. assets into HPC/AI data centers while still capitalizing on any potential Bitcoin upside in 2025 and 2026,” he added.

Miners are “diversifying into AI data-center hosting as a way to expand revenue and repurpose existing infrastructure for high-performance computing,” Coin Metrics said in a March report.

The computer hardware and electrical power supplies required for Bitcoin mining are also useful for applications requiring high-performance computing, including AI use cases.

In March, AI computing provider CoreWeave raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering that valued the company at roughly $20 billion, reflecting strong demand among investors for companies servicing AI applications.

CoreWeave’s earnings for the past quarter are scheduled for May 14.

In April, Bitfarms secured a $300 million line of credit from investment bank Macquarie to finance the expansion of an HPC facility in Pennsylvania. 

In January, the company sold a Bitcoin mining facility in Paraguay to Hive Digital, another miner, for $85 million.

Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight

Crypto founders are heading to Washington, DC, to meet with lawmakers ahead of another expected vote on a stablecoin bill that initially failed in the Senate, according to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

In a May 14 X post from the US Capitol rotunda, Armstrong said as many as “60 [crypto] founders” had gathered in DC to support the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act, being considered in the Senate and a draft of the market structure bill moving through the House of Representatives.

The Coinbase CEO said the Senate could consider another vote on the GENIUS Act “hopefully tomorrow” after it failed to get enough support from Democrats on May 8.

“Like any good negotiation, there’s a lot of details to work out at the last minute, but we’ve been stressing the urgency of this,” said Armstrong.

Many Democratic lawmakers have said they will not support any crypto-related legislation without a specific carve-out for President Donald Trump profiting from his digital asset ventures, like his TRUMP memecoin and his family-backed company World Liberty Financial.

Cointelegraph reached out to Coinbase for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Related: What are the next steps for the US stablecoin bill?

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.