Washington descends on crypto conference to talk regulation: federal stablecoins law could be passed this year

(Kit­co News) After the wide­ly well-received Lum­mis-Gilli­brand cryp­to bill, U.S. law­mak­ers are ready to roll up their sleeves to pass a clear fed­er­al sta­ble­coin law fol­low­ing the Ter­raUSD sta­ble­coin collapse.

U.S. law­mak­ers descend­ed on Austin, Texas this week to attend a pop­u­lar Con­sen­sus 2022 cryp­to con­fer­ence that fea­tured over 400 speak­ers and 15,000 attendees.

And one of the most pop­u­lar pan­els through­out the mul­ti-day event was titled ‘Wash­ing­ton’s Cryp­to Awak­en­ing: The Law­mak­er Town Hall’ — par­tic­i­pat­ed by Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), U.S. Sen­a­tor Cyn­thia Lum­mis (R‑WY), U.S. Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand (D‑NY) and Rep. Patrick McHen­ry (R‑N.C.).

The major­i­ty of atten­dees embraced the poten­tial reg­u­la­to­ry clar­i­ty com­ing from Wash­ing­ton, with Lum­mis and Gilli­brand explain­ing their own bill as a very com­pre­hen­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion that takes the exist­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty frame­work and lays the cryp­to world on top of it.

“The CFTC will be reg­u­lat­ing dig­i­tal assets that are com­modi­ties for spot and futures mar­ket,” Lum­mis said Fri­day. “The tax­a­tion com­po­nents are addressed, the def­i­n­i­tions are addressed. We are attempt­ing to bring to the floor of the Sen­ate for its first oppor­tu­ni­ty to look at this broad­ly, includ­ing sta­ble­coins and test­ing the notions of the CBDC with regard to some studies.”

To read more about the pro­posed Lum­mis-Gilli­brand bill, click here.

.@SenLummis on lat­est #cryp­to bill: It takes exist­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty frame­work, and we lay cryp­to world on top of that. For #CFTC, they will reg­u­late dig­i­tal assets that are com­modi­ties for spot and futures mar­ket. pic.twitter.com/IJ24HilU2b

— Kit­co NEWS (@KitcoNewsNOW) June 10, 2022

Anoth­er big head­line that came out from the pan­el dis­cus­sion was the incred­i­ble speed with which the U.S. could see fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion on sta­ble­coins get­ting passed.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say we get sta­ble­coins done this year,” Toomey said.

He added that law­mak­ers seem to have a broad con­sen­sus and an urgency to make it hap­pen. Toomey has his own bill on sta­ble­coins that he pro­posed back in April.

“We’re going to need to have reg­u­la­to­ry cer­tain­ty about that,” he said. “I know the [Biden] admin­is­tra­tion is inter­est­ed in doing some­thing in this space.”

Oth­er law­mak­ers on the pan­el agreed with the urgency described by Toomey, espe­cial­ly after the dra­mat­ic col­lapse of the TerraUSD.

“I think we could do a sta­ble­coin bill between now and the end of the year because it’s urgent,” Gilli­brand said. “We just had a finan­cial cri­sis, we just had a melt­down, we just had a dis­rup­tion because there is no reg­u­la­tion. And it’s not fair to the entire industry.”

How­ev­er, she admit­ted that pass­ing any­thing this quick­ly would be very dif­fi­cult in Wash­ing­ton because of how many com­mit­tees need to be involved.

McHen­ry point­ed out that there is no fed­er­al def­i­n­i­tion or fed­er­al law that defines sta­ble­coins. “It is impor­tant we get that right. We need to pro­tect inno­va­tion in that space. Need to have a clear treat­ment of dig­i­tal assets,” he said.

McHen­ry also revealed that the House is “close to sig­nif­i­cant move­ment” in a big bipar­ti­san way on sta­ble­coins. “This sum­mer, you’ll see a bipar­ti­san bill out of the House Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee on asset-backed sta­ble­coins,” he stated.