A Wall Street Journal investigation has raised conflict-of-interest questions about Bo Hines, the former White House crypto adviser who now runs Tether’s US business. The report says a consulting firm he co-founded took in about $6.3 million from Tether while he was helping to shape the GENIUS Act, the US stablecoin law.
The firm is Nxum. Hines started it in 2022 with his father, Todd Hines, and marketing executive Gary Dennis. Per the Journal, Hines kept a one-third stake throughout his time in government, from January to August 2025, when he served as executive director of the White House’s digital assets policy council.
The paper reports the Tether relationship took shape in April 2025, when Todd Hines and Dennis met Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in New York. A deal followed in May to develop a brand and public affairs strategy for the El Salvador-based issuer. The first payment arrived while Hines was still in office and working to finalize the legislation. After the intermediary’s cut, Nxum is said to have collected about $6.3 million, split among its three partners.
The Journal also reviewed Signal messages showing Hines stayed in a group chat with his Nxum partners while in government. According to the report, he passed along updates on the bill’s progress while those partners were in contact with Tether’s chief executive. People involved in the negotiations also told the paper that Hines pushed lawmakers to double the bill’s compliance window to three years, a change that mainly benefited Tether. Another item in the story describes a proposed $56 million investment that would have given Tether a quarter of Nxum.
Hines left the White House in August 2025 and joined Tether as a strategic adviser that month. By September he was chief executive of Tether’s US operation, which runs the dollar token USAT, issued through Anchorage Digital Bank.
Nxum rejects any suggestion of wrongdoing. A representative told the Journal that Hines had no knowledge of the Tether business and no role in it while serving. The firm says he received no Tether-derived money during that period and held only a passive investment that ethics rules did not require him to sell. Tether did not respond to the paper’s requests for comment.
The reporting does not show that Hines himself was paid Tether money while in office, and the Signal messages do not on their own prove he took part in the Tether contract. The open question is whether keeping a financial stake in a firm profiting from the industry’s biggest stablecoin issuer, while helping write the rules that issuer would operate under, was compatible with his duties. An ethics lawyer at the watchdog group CREW told the paper that federal law generally bars officials from working on matters in which they hold a financial interest.
The timing is awkward for the industry. Regulators are preparing to put the GENIUS framework into practice, and critics already argue that crypto’s growing influence in Washington blurs the line between policymaker and participant. Whether any formal inquiry follows remains unclear.
