Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a 12-page letter today to Jimmy Donaldson, the popular YouTuber better known as MrBeast, requesting more details about his company’s plans to expand into financial services. In February, his company, Beast Industries, purchased a banking app called Step that had planned to promote cryptocurrency to its young users.

Though Warren did not accuse the company of any wrongdoing, she asked more than a dozen questions and requested additional information about its move into the highly regulated world of finance. She also raised concerns about the company’s banking partner, Evolve Bank & Trust, but much of the letter was devoted to Beast Industries’ plans to potentially push cryptocurrency to children.

Warren’s inquiry comes in the wake of reporting in The New York Times this month about Beast Industries’ cryptocurrency plans. In a 2021 interview, Donaldson discussed a million-dollar bitcoin bet that he had personally made and investments in several CryptoPunks, a type of nonfungible token, or NFT. Some of those bets returned 20 or 30 times the money he had laid out, he told interviewers.

Beast Industries filed a trademark application last year for “MrBeast Financial,” which could offer loan products such as cash advances and credit cards. It mentioned cryptocurrency four times.

Step offers spending, savings and investment accounts, geared for children younger than 18. It had announced plans in 2022 for a new crypto and stock investment product that parents would oversee. It claimed to be “the first financial app that will allow both teens under 18 and young adults to buy, sell, hold and receive crypto.” Then, the company quietly backed away from the offering.

“Despite Step’s careful claims that crypto investing by minors was only with the permission of a parent or guardian, Step published resources encouraging kids to pressure their parents into crypto investments,” Warren wrote in the letter to Donaldson and Jeffrey Housenbold, the CEO of Beast Industries.

She also raised questions about the troubled history of Evolve Bank & Trust, which has had several high-profile issues in recent years, including a major cybersecurity attack in 2024, regulatory actions and problems with other financial technology partners.

Most fintech companies like Step are not banks themselves, so they partner with institutions backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Evolve has teamed up with other fintech companies including Synapse Financial Technologies, which filed for bankruptcy in 2024. When that happened, a large swath of customers could not access millions of dollars that Evolve and others held.

In August, Evolve brought in a new CEO, Bob Hartheimer, to navigate the challenges. This year, he pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and is no longer with the company.

“Beast Industries is primarily an entertainment and consumer product company — and any foray into financial services, particularly services aimed at children — must be done with great care and in compliance with the law,” Warren wrote.

“Our primary motivation behind this deal is to improve the financial future of the next generation,” said a Beast Industries spokesperson, in an emailed statement. “Now that we’ve completed the transaction and have ownership control, we’re examining all existing offerings and marketing approaches to ensure that Step’s future is developed thoughtfully and deliberately, meets our very high quality standards, and is in compliance with applicable laws and regulatory requirements.”

“We appreciate Sen. Warren’s outreach and look forward to engaging with her as we build the next phase of the Step financial platform.”

Beast Industries would join a long line of financial services startups that offer cryptocurrency. Both Robinhood and SoFi, which cater mostly to adults, already have such offerings.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard/Karsten Moran
c.2026 The New York Times Company