This week, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers descended on Austin, Texas to attend the Consensus 2022 crypto conference, which featured over 400 speakers and 15,000 attendees.
The first panel topic at the multi-day event was titled “Washington’s Crypto Awakening: The Lawmaker Town Hall,” which was hosted by Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).”
The majority of the attendees appeared to like the prospect of regulatory clarity emanating from Washington, with Lummis and Gillibrand referring to their bill as a very comprehensive piece of legislation that builds on the current framework.
“The CFTC will be overseeing digital assets that are commodities for spot and futures market,” Lummis said. “Taxation issues, as well as the definitions, have been addressed. We’re working to bring this bill to the Senate floor for the first time so it can be thoroughly reviewed, including stablecoins and testing CBDC ideas with regard to some studies.”
Another major headline from the panel discussion was how quickly federal stablecoin legislation might be implemented in the United States.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we’ll have stablecoins completed by the end of the year,” Toomey added.
Senator Toomey said that there appears to be a broad agreement and a sense of urgency among his colleagues. In April, Senator Toomey introduced his own bill on stablecoins.
“We’re going to need regulatory certainty on that,” he explained. “The Biden administration is interested in taking some steps in this area.”
Several members of the panel agreed with Toomey’s call for urgency, especially as a result of the dramatic TerraUSD failure.
“I think we’ll be able to pass a stablecoin bill before the end of the year,” she added. “We just had a financial crisis, a meltdown, and a disruption because there was no regulation. And it’s not right for the entire industry.”
She also stated, however, that it will be impossible to pass anything like this swiftly in Washington since so many committees must be involved.
“There is no federal definition or federal legislation that defines stablecoins,” McHenry stressed. “We need to make sure we get it right. We need to protect innovation in this area.” Need to have a clear treatment of digital assets, he added.
Rep. McHenry went on to say, “We’re close to significant movement in a major bipartisan way on stablecoins. This summer, you’ll see a bipartisan bill from the House Financial Services Committee on asset-backed stablecoins,” he vowed.
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