U.S. House Expected To Have A Crypto Bill In 2 Months

By Kevin • April 30, 2023 10:37 am • Comments

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee and House Agriculture Committee just announced that they expect to release new legislation that will oversee the crypto industry within the next two months.

That is quite the aggressive timeline given the fact that legislation for crypto has been extremely slow in the past compared to the pace of innovation that is currently happening in the sector.

Even once this bill is introduced, it is still unknown if President Biden will actually sign the bill so that it becomes law.

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Representative Patrick McHenry, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, stated that the bill will address the securities and commodities debate that currently plagues the crypto industry.

It is agreed that such issues must be resolved as soon as possible so that crypto firms are not constantly targeted due to the unclear regulations.

CoinDesk reports:

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), the other panellist during the session, said she looked forward to coordinating those efforts with McHenry, adding that the House had a better chance than the Senate at getting legislation through earlier. She said if the House moves first on crypto, it would “improve our chances” in the Senate.

“We have tried to keep partisan tinge off this subject,” Lummis said. “This is a bipartisan subject we need to address before the 2024 election.”

The U.S. Congress has so far been unable to get comprehensive legislation on crypto passed despite a number of bills making progress on Capitol Hill last year.

But this month Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee took a swing at finding bipartisanship support for a second effort at stablecoin legislation, though bipartisan support remains uncertain. Republicans introduced a discussion draft which may mark a new starting point for negotiations with Democrats.

McHenry’s committee had also previously questioned the SEC Chair Gary Gensler over his refusal to state whether or not he considers ETH (ether) to be a security.

The fact that Gensler was not able to answer that question directly indicates that the SEC does not have clear rules on how they actually determine whether or not a digital asset is considered a security.

Rather, they are using their own interpretation of the rules to decide which digital assets to go after which harms the entire crypto industry.

These rules and regulations of the industry are becoming increasingly vital as the country has recently suffered from an ongoing banking crisis.

Meanwhile, the EU has recently passed the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) law which provides a crypto framework for the region.

CoinTelegraph reports:

“What we plan to do over the next two months is report a bill out that deals with the capital raising piece for digital assets, all the way through to how a product can go from a securities regime to commodities regime and also at the same time, preserve our rights around products that are neither neatly [put] into a securities regime or commodities regime,” he added.

McHenry also stressed that the hearings aim to establish a bill providing regulatory clarity to the crypto sector, which adds to the work on a bipartisan bill led by Lummis and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

“Some of the people that I speak to that remain very skeptical about digital assets are concerned that cybercrime is not adequately addressed in our bill.

So I think you’ll see a stronger cybercrime aspect to our bill. I think you’ll see some provisions that require certain registration […] so that companies are properly regulated and vetted,” she said.

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