Exclusive: Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) is rolling out a new bipartisan bill to boost blockchain technology, creating a “National Blockchain Deployment Advisory Committee” at the Commerce Department and tasking the secretary with a bigger advisory role.
Moreno is working with two fellow freshmen on the push: Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.).
The new legislation would task the commerce secretary with serving as a principal adviser to the president on blockchain and applications built on distributed ledger technologies similar to blockchain.
Moreno’s move hits close to home. The freshman GOP senator co-founded a blockchain business for digital car titles before coming to Congress.
And while there are a lot of uses for blockchain, the most notable is crypto.
Moreno also got a huge boost from the crypto industry in his election last year, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in ads. Moreno toppled former Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in the race and joined the Banking Committee himself.
Crypto has already made its mark as a major financial services focal point for the 119th Congress and the Trump administration. The White House launched its own working group on digital asset markets in January.
The House: There’s also interest in the House for Commerce to focus more on developing blockchain technology.
Florida Reps. Kat Cammack, a Republican, and Darren Soto, a Democrat, have a House bill by the same name as the Moreno-led effort, which is similar to the Senate push but not directly coordinated.
Cammack and Soto’s measure would also direct the commerce secretary to take on an advisory role on blockchain issues and create a “Blockchain Deployment Program” at the department.
