Lawmakers and executives crowded into the East Room of the White House in July 2025 to watch President Trump sign the Genius Act, a landmark crypto bill that set rules for selling stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar.

From a podium, Trump rattled off thank-yous to the law’s architects. “Where’s Bo Hines?” he asked. The president’s 29-year-old crypto adviser rose from the front row to applause.

What most people in the room didn’t know: While Hines was leading the White House’s push to pass the Genius Act, Tether—the company with the most at stake in the legislation—was steering millions of dollars to a business he co-owned, according to messages, internal documents and payment records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Hines exchanged Signal messages showing that while he was in the White House, he took part in a group chat with his company partners, where he discussed legislative developments and relayed Genius Act talking points as his partners were communicating with Tether’s chief executive. Once the bill was signed, Tether hired him—to run its U.S. operations.

Hines had started Nxum, a small consulting firm, with his father and another partner around 2022. Each owned one-third. He stepped back from day-to-day management of the company when he joined the administration in early 2025 but kept his ownership stake, his government ethics disclosures show.

Weeks after Hines began working on stablecoin legislation inside the White House, Nxum, which had only dabbled in crypto until that point, started pursuing business with Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer.

A Nxum business partner forged a deal in May 2025 for a “strategic brand and public affairs plan” for El Salvador-based Tether with the understanding that Nxum would carry out the work, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. One document during the deal’s planning said, “Nxum will engage all necessary parties and lead the entire process.”Since the deal was signed, Nxum has earned $6.3 million from the arrangement, according to the documents, messages and blockchain records, plus a person involved in the deal.

The payments began while Hines was working to finalize the Genius Act—legislation that would dictate Tether’s ability to operate in the U.S.

In addition to strategizing with his Nxum partners over Signal, Hines encouraged lawmakers to double the bill’s compliance period from 18 months to 36 months, according to people involved in the negotiations. Tether, which would need more time than its U.S.-based competitors to reach compliance, was the primary beneficiary of the longer transition period.

The Genius Act was signed into law on July 18, 2025, with enthusiastic support from Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino, who sat beside Hines at the White Houseg ceremony.

Three weeks later, on Aug. 9, Hines announced he was leaving the White House. The following month, Tether named him chief executive of its new U.S. division.

A Nxum representative said that when Hines was working in the White House, he wasn’t aware that Nxum had business dealings with Tether and wasn’t involved in them. The representative said Hines “did not receive any Tether-derived funds during that period, and had no economic relationship of any kind with Tether while serving in the White House,” and that he didn’t engineer an arrangement for a position at Tether.

The representative said Hines recused himself from all company business when he joined the White House and that ethics rules didn’t require him to divest what the representative described as his “passive investment” in the firm. Hines’s communications with his Nxum business partners “related only to topics already in the public domain,” the representative said.

The extension of the compliance period was the result of deliberations among multiple stakeholders, according to the representative. Additionally, “it was not necessary for Tether to enter into any payment arrangements, as it could (and did) simply use the weight of its market position to advocate for an extension of the compliance period,” the representative said. Tether didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A White House official said Bo Hines was no longer a White House employee and that the administration expects its staff to comply with all applicable federal ethics laws and regulations.

U.S. law generally prohibits government officials from working on matters where they retain a financial interest, said Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel for the government watchdog organization CREW. “Historically, most officials have avoided these entanglements by divesting their prior business interests entirely,” Brown said.

Hines never held a role in government or at a crypto company before Trump brought him into the White House.

He had played college football, first at NC State and then at Yale, before going to law school. He then led two unsuccessful congressional campaigns to represent his home state of North Carolina as a Republican.

He and his father, Todd Hines, founded Nxum with Gary Dennis, a marketing executive. The trio ran a lean operation, describing themselves at various points as a media company, a consulting agency and an investment firm.

On a now-deleted “Team” page of its website, Nxum listed only one team member besides its three partners before Hines entered the White House: chief investment officer Nav Singh. Formerly known as Navnoor Kang, according to people familiar with the matter, he had been sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to fraud after prosecutors said he took bribes as an executive of New York’s state pension fund. Singh didn’t respond to requests for comment.

One of Nxum’s focuses early on, according to people close to the firm, was managing social-media accounts for right-wing figures such as Ryan Fournier, the conservative activist behind Students for Trump.

In 2023, Nxum began helping to market a marijuana-themed NFT collection called Kush Kriminals that failed to get off the ground.

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Nxum drew closer to the Trump campaign, helping create a Trump-themed meme coin called Restore the Republic and donating $1 million worth of billboard ads to MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC.

After the election, Trump appointed Hines to be executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, handing him day-to-day control over the administration’s crypto agenda.

Nxum’s partners told a business associate after Hines’s appointment that he would have no role in the company’s crypto-related work because of his new position, according to messages reviewed by the Journal.

Trump named his AI and crypto czar David Sacks as the council’s chair. “Together, they will create an environment where this industry can flourish,” Trump wrote in a Dec. 22, 2024, social-media post.

Trump and his family have launched several crypto ventures since 2024, including a stablecoin, delivering the president a windfall of more than $1.4 billion last year.

He has also appointed crypto proponents to his administration, such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who advocated for Tether when he led Cantor Fitzgerald, its primary U.S. financial partner. A Commerce Department spokesperson said Lutnick divested from Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald before joining the White House. Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment.

The digital-asset council’s first legislative mission was to pass the Genius Act—a step toward fulfilling Trump’s signature promise to introduce laws that would make America the “crypto capital of the world.”Until the Genius Act, the U.S. government lacked specific rules for issuing stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world assets such as the U.S. dollar. The regulatory gap left room for Tether to grow with limited oversight; its flagship product, USDT, now accounts for roughly 60% of the $300 billion global stablecoin market.

In 2021, Tether paid nearly $60 million in penalties without admitting wrongdoing to New York and federal regulators over claims it had misled investors by stating USDT was backed 1:1 by U.S. dollars. The company has also drawn scrutiny from lawmakers for its use by cybercriminals and money launderers. Last month, Democratic members of the Senate subcommittee on investigations released a report saying Iran relies heavily on USDT to evade sanctions and fund terrorist proxy organizations such as Hezbollah.

Tether has said it works actively with U.S. and international law enforcement to combat illicit activity, and that the public nature of blockchains makes USDT unsuitable for criminality and enhances authorities’ ability to surveil and potentially seize it from bad actors.

Congress has long pushed to rein in the stablecoin industry. Issuers hoped to seize on the opportunity of a crypto-friendly White House to lock in more favorable regulations. Tether voiced concern that its competitors would influence the legislation to disadvantage the company.

In April 2025, while Hines was leading the administration’s push for the Genius Act, his father and their Nxum co-owner, Dennis, traveled to New York to meet Ardoino, the Tether chief, at a hotel near Central Park, according to a person who attended the meeting.

The meeting was convened by Peter Vincer, a marketing entrepreneur who has worked with Nxum on other business deals.

Vincer after the meeting sent Ardoino a “Tether Comprehensive Brand Plan,” that said Nxum would lead a “strategic lobbying and a full scale public relations and media awareness campaign” for Tether, according to a copy of the draft plan reviewed by the Journal.

Vincer sent the proposal, which was on Nxum letterhead, to Ardoino on the encrypted messaging app Keet in a group chat that included Dennis, according to messages reviewed by the Journal. The Nxum representative said Nxum didn’t approve or execute the proposal and that Nxum didn’t have a contract with Tether while Bo Hines was in the White House.

The group made revisions to the proposal and came to a final contract, which didn’t refer to “lobbying,” documents show. Tether signed the deal with Vincer’s marketing company, Notorious.

Tether agreed to pay Vincer’s company $415,000 a month, in six-month installments, for a minimum of two years. Tether sent its first $2.49 million payment on May 11, 2025, according to messages and blockchain payment records.

Tether used Bitfinex—a cryptocurrency exchange owned by Tether’s parent company—to wire USDT to Vincer. He kept $498,000 and sent the remainder to a crypto wallet used by Nxum, and from there the money was split three ways, according to the messages and blockchain records.

Tether sent subsequent payments—which occurred after Bo Hines had left the White House—directly to Nxum. Blockchain records show Nxum-controlled wallets received two $2.49 million USDT payments directly from Bitfinex, in December 2025 and April 2026. The Nxum-controlled wallets sent a portion of each payment to Vincer and broke up the remaining amount three ways.

Vincer told the Journal he served as an intermediary for Nxum’s deal with Tether. He transferred the contract directly to Nxum after Bo Hines left the administration.

Vincer said Bo Hines told him he would be paid a share of Tether’s payments afterg over the contract. In a Signal message, Bo Hines wrote to Vincer, “Everyone has agreed that you are never to be f—ed.”But Vincer said that while he regarded Tether as “a stand-up company,” Nxum failed to pay him what he believed he was owed. The Nxum representative told the Journal the company disagreed with Vincer’s claim.

In August 2026, Nxum offered Vincer $311,000 plus 21% of a coming Tether payment if he agreed never to discuss his dealings with Nxum, Tether, Dennis, or Todd or Bo Hines, according to a copy of the agreement. He said he didn’t sign.

Around the same time, after the Journal began questioning people in Nxum’s orbit, Dennis accused Vincer of telling “lies” to the press about their business agreement. “Mistake,” Dennis texted him.

The Senate passed the Genius legislation in June 2025, and it moved to the House. It included language—dubbed the “Tether loophole” by critics in Washington and the industry—providing a pathway for stablecoin issuers to operate in approved countries outside of the U.S.

Separately, the bill gave a three-year grace period for crypto exchanges to phase out noncompliant assets. The longer time frame—which would lessen the disruption to Tether’s core business—was pushed by Hines.

Democrats and some U.S.-based stablecoin issuers wanted a shorter, 18-month window. Bloomberg earlier reported that Hines had pushed for the three-year window.

In a podcast following the successful Senate vote, Ardoino, the Tether chief, said he was “very excited” about the Genius Act, calling it “a step in the right direction.”In the House negotiations, the bill hit a speed bump. On June 25, Todd Hines messaged Dennis with a play-by-play. “Things really heating up here on the Bill,” Todd Hines told Dennis.

Rep. Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip, was joining Republican holdouts to delay a House vote. Emmer “is working against Bo and Sacks,” Todd Hines told Dennis in the messages.

An Emmer spokesperson said he wasn’t working against Hines and Sacks.

Todd Hines wrote to Dennis that he was meeting with Jesse Spiro, Tether’s head of government affairs, and had received a “very worried” call from Ardoino. “They want us to obliterate these members that are fighting crypto,” he wrote.

Several hours later, messages from Bo Hines show him working with his Nxum partners to get things back on track. In their “Nxum” group chat on Signal, Bo Hines delivered talking points to his father and Dennis about the Republican holdouts.

“Let’s get ready to go,” Bo Hines wrote to the group. “Message is they are undermining the president and are bought and paid for by democratic shills like coinbase and a16z,” referring to a crypto exchange and a venture-capital firm.

His father responded, “let’s start knocking heads.”On July 15, 2025, Trump met with a small group of the holdouts in the Oval Office. Later that evening, he announced he had reached an agreement for the members to support the bill when it returned to the floor.

“Bo got it done,” Dennis messaged an associate following the announcement. “It was huge and epic,” he added. “It was simply Bo and Trump getting it done in the oval office.”The Genius Act was signed into law three days later.

Bo Hines soon announced on X that he was stepping down from his White House role. Tether hired Hines to lead its new U.S. division in September.

Just after joining Tether, Hines traded up from a $1.4 million home in a golf-course community near Charlotte, N.C., to a $3.3 million, 9,000-square-foot house down the street, according to real-estate records.

People who have attended meetings with the family said Bo Hines, his father and Dennis began traveling by private jet after Bo Hines left the White House. A Hawker 900XP jet, generally priced around $4 million to $5 million, wased to Todd Hines’s home address this January.

Nxum has continued to expand its relationship with Tether. In recent months, it has begun circulating a pitch deck to potential investors that says Tether, the “anchor investor,” will buy a 25% stake in Nxum for $56 million. Nxum, which is offering to sell 10% to other investors, says it is the “strategic media infrastructure layer behind Tether” and says the founders will keep 65% of the company.

Nxum has also remained active in politics, helping launch in September 2025 the pro-crypto Fellowship PAC, which is chaired by Spiro, Tether’s head of government affairs. The organization has raised at least $11 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and others, according to federal disclosures. The PAC has paid more than $6.5 million to Nxum for issue advocacy advertising, among other services, the disclosures show.

Dennis messaged an associate as they were preparing a marketing campaign before the PAC was announced. The PAC’s ties to Tether and Nxum weren’t to be advertised. “Again, no link to Tether, Nxum, Bo,” he wrote.

The Nxum representative said it was reasonable to not want a PAC to be linked with particular companies or individuals because the goal is to gain a broad base of support.

Write to Sam Kessler at sam.kessler@wsj.com