It appears that U.S. lawmakers have bigger fish to fry as stablecoin and crypto regulations remain on the back burner. During a financial conference on Oct. 18, representative Jim Himes said that the bill will not happen this Congress due to upcoming elections.
“It’s probably not happening in early 2023,” Himes said as frustrations mount in the U.S. over a lack of clarity for crypto assets.
The Biden Administration has urged Congress to press ahead with crypto regulations with a report from the Financial Stability Oversight Council earlier this month pushing for inter-agency cooperation.
It appears to have fallen on deaf ears, however.
Himes commented on what he considered remarkable progress over the past few years.
“Four years ago if you said Bitcoin, crypto and DeFi in the halls of Congress, nobody would have known what you were talking about. The progress that has been made in Congress is pretty remarkable.”
However, politicians and bankers have only paid attention to crypto because markets have surged by around 400% over the past four years, and that does not take the November peak into consideration.
Himes, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, has spent months drafting a stablecoin bill with colleagues; however, there are still deep divisions on how they should be regulated.
Congress needs to get serious about “updating statutes that allow the regulators to do their work,” he argued. “If the regulators continue to do what they’re doing right now, which is sort of extrapolating or regulating by analogy, that opens up the court challenges,” he said, possibly in reference to the ongoing battle between Ripple and the SEC over the clouded issue of securities sales.
According to Himes, the proposed bill on crypto and stablecoin regulation submitted by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis is “getting momentum.”
This would be a good thing for the crypto industry as it pushes for Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversight rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Under this bill, crypto assets are more likely to be considered commodities and not securities that have much tighter regulations.
Either way, nothing happens fast with U.S. politics, as Lummis does not expect the bill to reach the President’s desk for another six months.