House 'Crypto Week' Underway as Lawmakers Weigh Bills

Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood talks 'crypto week' as the House of Representatives plans to take up a slate of bills to regulate and back cryptocurrency.

Republican House leaders anticipate passing an industry-friendly stablecoin regulatory bill this week, sending Congress’s first major digital assets legislation to the president and kicking off a series of votes on related measures that supporters have dubbed “Crypto Week.”

Industry backers hope the legislation will promote wider use of dollar-denominated stablecoins, marking the first big victory for crypto advocates since they poured hundreds of millions of dollars last year into efforts to elect friendly lawmakers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

“The golden age of digital assets is here,” said Republican Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, an industry ally who chairs a House subcommittee on crypto.

President Donald Trump, whose family has launched its own crypto ventures, has made digital assets regulation a priority of his second term, declaring that the US will be the “crypto capital” of the world. Many Democrats have unsuccessfully demanded crypto legislation prohibit Trump and his family’s digital assets ventures, which has earned them hundreds of millions of dollars.

The House is also scheduled to vote on two other industry-backed measures this week, one that would set broader market structure rules for crypto and another prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing digital currency.

The Senate passed the stablecoin legislation last month with broad bipartisan support. It sets regulatory rules for dollar-backed stablecoins, including a requirement for firms to hold dollar-for-dollar reserves in short-term government debt or similar products overseen by state or federal regulators.

Republicans in the House and Senate have been negotiating a path forward on the other crypto legislation. House GOP members have previously expressed concern over the Senate ever adopting a market structure measure, and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott has set a September 30 deadline for his panel to finish its work on that legislation.

The market structure legislation, which would give most of the responsibility for digital assets to a regulatory agency the industry views as more friendly, won bipartisan support in House committee votes and is expected to win some Democratic votes on the floor. The bill classifies most cryptocurrencies as commodities to be overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on market structure last week, and the Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over the CFTC, scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. Senators plan to release draft legislation in July and unveiled guiding principles in June, which were largely in line with the House’s version of market structure.

The top-ranking Democrats on related committees, Representative Maxine Waters on the House Financial Services Committee and Elizabeth Warren on the Senate Banking Committee, have opposed the measures. They argue that none of the crypto legislation does enough to protect consumers and the bills lack conflict of interest measures to combat the Trump family’s ties to the crypto industry.

Waters is planning to counter-program Republicans with an “anti-crypto corruption week.”

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