Washington is in the midst of a quiet power struggle to control the future of crypto policy. For the most part, the Senate has picked a side.
President Donald Trump has called for the House to quickly pick up and pass the Senate’s GENIUS Act, which would regulate stablecoins. House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) has, in so many words, said not so fast.
Instead, Hill is talking a lot about the importance of passing a stablecoin bill as well as a crypto market structure reform bill. That’s fueling speculation that the House could produce a two-pronged piece of legislation that fuses the crypto industry’s top agenda items together.
Across the Hill. The Senate is not thrilled by that prospect.
“All you have to do is take a look at what the president has stated publicly, and I think that’s quite important,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who was lead sponsor of the GENIUS Act. “I don’t think we should take a chance of losing this win right now.”
Hill told an audience at The Brookings Institute Monday that Trump had asked lawmakers to produce both stablecoin and market structure reform before the August recess. Hill’s hope is that when House Republican leadership receives the GENIUS Act, lawmakers “can figure out how we’re going to move both the idea of stablecoin and market structure ahead.”
Senators say they need more time to figure out what exactly they want to do in market structure reform. The Senate Banking Committee will host its first subcommittee hearing on the subject this afternoon.
Some senators would love to avoid reliving the process around the GENIUS Act, which was a bit of a procedural nightmare that stretched well over a month. “We went through 77 different versions of the bill here,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said. “We don’t want to go through that again.”
Senate Democrats aren’t itching to vote on a massive crypto package, either. “It was challenging enough to get to yes on the GENIUS Act that it would not be wise to try to combine them,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said.
Industry pulse check: Hill’s positioning speaks to a real anxiety among some major players in the crypto industry. Advancing stablecoins through the Senate was painful, and some advocates fear getting another vote on a much-more-complicated market structure bill this year could be difficult.
One key voice isn’t sweating the House’s moves. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told us: “The House is going to need to do what they think is best. There’s a divergence of opinion, even within the industry.”
