Bipartisan Crypto Bill to Hit Congress Within Weeks

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  • Sen­a­tors Lum­mis and Gilli­brand said they plan to unveil their bipar­ti­san cryp­to bill in June
  • It will be the first com­pre­hen­sive cryp­tocur­ren­cy bill to be intro­duced, Gilli­brand said

Sen­a­tors Cyn­thia Lum­mis (R‑Wyo.) and Kirsten Gilli­brand (D‑NY) took the stage Tues­day at the DC Blockchain Sum­mit to dis­cuss details of their high­ly antic­i­pat­ed bipar­ti­san cryp­tocur­ren­cy bill, which they said will be intro­duced as soon as next week. 

The Respon­si­ble Finan­cial Inno­va­tion Act, which has been in the works for over a year, is going to be the first com­pre­hen­sive dig­i­tal assets frame­work to make it to Capi­tol Hill, Gilli­brand said. 

“Our bill does include some of the [same] pro­vi­sions as some of the oth­er House and Sen­ate bills, but no oth­er bill endeav­ors to cre­ate a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the whole indus­try,” Gilli­brand said. “Most oth­er bills are small, dis­creet and one-idea bills.” 

High­lights of the bill include pro­vi­sions that pro­tect min­ers from being treat­ed as bro­kers, which tack­les a con­tro­ver­sial sec­tion of the recent­ly-passed Infra­struc­ture Bill. It also grants the Com­mod­i­ty and Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion (CFTC) reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty over much of the space and clar­i­fies that cryp­tocur­ren­cies are not secu­ri­ties unless they are being offered to fund a com­pa­ny, such as an ini­tial coin offering. 

“It’s pret­ty clear that bit­coin is a com­mod­i­ty,” Lum­mis said. “It is our intent that the CFTC takes the reins of juris­dic­tion over bit­coin and [ether], togeth­er they make up over 60% of the cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­kets in exis­tence, and they’re the ones that are most like­ly to survive.” 

The bill ref­er­ences the same “respon­si­ble inno­va­tion” high­light­ed in Pres­i­dent Biden’s exec­u­tive order. It’s a cause the two sen­a­tors are hop­ing their col­leagues can get behind. 

“Cyn­thia [Lum­mis] and I togeth­er can work with our col­leagues to find the com­mon ground to move it for­ward,” Gilli­brand said. “I’m very opti­mistic, and the rea­son I am is because this bill has been heav­i­ly researched.”

The two sen­a­tors have con­sult­ed with stake­hold­ers and indus­try lead­ers for months to com­pose this bill, Lum­mis added. There have been suc­cess­ful bipar­ti­san efforts in the past, Gilli­brand said, and this should be no dif­fer­ent. Still, get­ting the bill to the floor is going to be an uphill bat­tle, the two admitted.

This bill will have at least four com­mit­tees of juris­dic­tion, Gilli­brand said. To make it to a vote on the floor, it will like­ly need at least four hear­ings, which can be a lengthy process. Efforts are already under­way, Gilli­brand said. 

“On my com­mit­tee of juris­dic­tion on the Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee, Deb­bie Stabenow (D‑Mich.) was very inter­est­ed in this space,” Gilli­brand said. “I’m going to give her our draft leg­is­la­tion and I’m hop­ing that she likes it enough to mark up this draft.”


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  • Casey Wag­n­er

    Block­works

    Senior Reporter

    Casey Wag­n­er is a New York-based busi­ness jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing reg­u­la­tion, leg­is­la­tion, dig­i­tal asset invest­ment firms, mar­ket struc­ture, cen­tral banks and gov­ern­ments, and CBD­Cs. Pri­or to join­ing Block­works, she report­ed on mar­kets at Bloomberg News. She grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia with a degree in Media Studies.

    Con­tact Casey via email at [email pro­tect­ed]

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