US lawmaker hints at upcoming crypto legislation as Jerome Powell says Fed will release report on digital currency soon

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At his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing in front of mem­bers of the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee, Fed­er­al Reserve chair Jerome Pow­ell said the agency would be releas­ing its report on cryp­tocur­ren­cies “with­in weeks.”

Address­ing Ida­ho Sen­a­tor Mike Crapo remote­ly from the Dirk­sen Sen­ate Office Build­ing on Tues­day, Pow­ell said the Fed’s report on dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies wasn’t “quite where we need­ed to get it” but would be released soon regard­less. The Fed chair cit­ed “changes in mon­e­tary pol­i­cy” as part of the rea­son for the delayed report, which is expect­ed to address pol­i­cy sur­round­ing the pos­si­ble roll­out of a cen­tral bank dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy in the Unit­ed States.

“It’s more going to be an exer­cise in ask­ing ques­tions and seek­ing input from the pub­lic rather than tak­ing a lot of posi­tions on var­i­ous issues, although we do take some posi­tions,” said Pow­ell. “The report real­ly is ready to go and I would expect we will drop it — I hate to say it again — in com­ing weeks.”

Powell’s tes­ti­mo­ny comes the same day Min­neso­ta Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Emmer hint­ed on Twit­ter that he would be unveil­ing new leg­is­la­tion relat­ed to dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy, with­out pro­vid­ing specifics. It’s unclear if the upcom­ing bill would be aimed at “fix­ing” the def­i­n­i­tion of a bro­ker in the infra­struc­ture law, which took effect Novem­ber 2021, or anoth­er reg­u­la­to­ry path to encour­age inno­va­tion in the cryp­to industry. 

Dur­ing his time as Fed chair, Pow­ell has sug­gest­ed there was no rush in the U.S. releas­ing a dig­i­tal dol­lar despite oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing Chi­na, mov­ing ahead with CBD­Cs. In Decem­ber, he spoke in favor of sta­ble­coins, say­ing they could be a “use­ful, effi­cient con­sumer-serv­ing part of the finan­cial sys­tem if they’re prop­er­ly regulated.”

Should he receive more than 50 votes once his nom­i­na­tion goes to the full Sen­ate, Pow­ell would be re-con­firmed as the Fed chair for anoth­er four years. Lael Brainard will also be address­ing U.S. law­mak­ers in a Thurs­day hear­ing regard­ing her con­fir­ma­tion as the Fed vice chair, replac­ing Richard Clarida.

Relat­ed: US is not mov­ing fast enough to devel­op a CBDC, says for­mer CFTC chair

At least three seats at the Fed­er­al Reserve’s board of gov­er­nors will be open to nom­i­na­tions from U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in 2022 fol­low­ing the depar­ture of Clar­i­da, who yes­ter­day announced he intend­ed to resign on Jan. 14 ahead of his term expir­ing. Biden is report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing Duke Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Sarah Bloom Raskin to join the group of sev­en gov­er­nors, in addi­tion to econ­o­mists Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson.

Coin­tele­graph reached out to Tom Emmer’s office, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.



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