Even as the U.S. House of Representatives is paralyzed by a Republican leadership drama, U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis are still pressing to get crypto legislative through.
A stablecoin bill cleared the House Financial Services Committee this year, but the Senate hasn't yet made as much progress – despitein crypto, which exists now as an amendment on the Senate's defense spending package. That's now at the stage in which the Senate and House work out the differences in their bills, and if the crypto provision passes, it would set up U.S. examination standards and study how to combat anonymous transactions.
As for the wider, more ambitious market-structure legislation for crypto, which would empower the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a watchdog of crypto commodities trading, Gillibrand said that"hopefully next year" it can find some traction. She said the current posture of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to steer the industry with punishments is untenable.
Lummis said that traditional financial firms are showing up, especially in the space around prospective spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and other crypto ETFs."As mainstream finance moves into this space, I think people in Congress are going to see we can't have our head in the sand anymore," Lummis said at the same event on Tuesday, suggesting that some lawmakers will be more comfortable with the representatives of traditional financial firms.