Congress made history this summer when both chambers advanced legislation to codify the regulation of stablecoins. Lawmakers aren’t done tweaking this area of the law.
Stablecoin legislation was part one of enacting the crypto sector’s ambitious policy agenda. Part two is market structure — a bigger effort that will retool the responsibilities of federal financial regulators. The House passed its version of this push with the CLARITY Act, and we’re waiting to see how the Senate responds.
But lawmakers and industry advocates are still talking about amending the GENIUS Act, this time via market structure reform. That’s led to a strange state of play where the bill-turned-law could change in meaningful ways, even as national regulators at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) begin to implement the legislation.
“I want to make sure that the OCC does not disadvantage the dual banking system,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told us last month.
An OCC spokesperson declined to comment.
The Senate. Lummis, a longtime crypto advocate who chairs the Senate Banking panel’s subcommittee on digital assets, has been worried about state versus federal powers for a while.
Just last week, Lummis told us she supported a broad coalition’s push to change a section from the GENIUS Act that would have eased the path for uninsured banking firms to do payments activity.
One warning rattle came during the confirmation of Comptroller Jonathan Gould. Lummis briefly turned heads when she voted against cloture for Gould’s nomination.
Lummis told us she did that to send a signal. “I voted against cloture and spoke to him on the phone before I voted for him — just in the intervening two hours — to explain what my concern was,” Lummis said. “I had my chance to say my piece.”
The House. Members would like to see some GENIUS changes too. Look no further than the CLARITY Act, which has a whole section dedicated to amending GENIUS.
House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) would like to see CLARITY pass the Senate. Spokesperson Brooke Nethercott said the bill “closed many of the regulatory gaps as it relates to the use of payment stablecoins beyond issuance.”
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) is another leader on the panel who pushed for changes via CLARITY.
“I honestly think the stablecoin market would work fine without the GENIUS Act. It’s worked since 2018,” Davidson told us last month.
One of the changes Davidson pushed for would codify a variety of stablecoin that’s backed by commodities, including gold.
“We didn’t have the consensus to get it into STABLE,” Davidson said, referring to the House’s original stablecoin bill. “We were able to build that and get it added to CLARITY. Hopefully, the Senate does that.”
