Category: News

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bipartisan crypto bill – house

A new bipartisan House bill announced yesterday will try to push through changes to egregious crypto broker definitions attached to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. The way it was written at the time, miners, stakers, hardware and software wallets as well as software developers would be on the hook for providing tax reporting documents to the IRS.

House Financial Services Chair Rep. Patrick McHenry (R, NC) and HFS committee member Rep. Ritchie Torres (D, NY) are co-sponsoring the new bill titled “Keep Innovation in America Act” and according to a quote from Chair McHenry, it “will fix the poorly constructed digital asset reporting requirements included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”

• • Read the release.
  • And, see the bill.
  • H.R. 1414 “Keep Innovation in America Act” has been referred to House Financial Services and House Ways and Means Committees

Co-sponsors are bipartisan, too: Reps. Warren Davidson (R, OH), Ro Khanna (D, CA), Darren Soto (D, FL.), Eric Swalwell (D, CA), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R, MN), Rep. French Hill (R, AR) and Rep. David Schweikert (R, AZ). Read more from Punchbowl News.

This is one of those “low-hanging fruit” bills/changes that could get crypto legislation momentum going – it’s generally perceived as small and hard to argue with. (Read what a staffer said last August about this change.) It may also help re-ignite bipartisan crypto interest which has sagged since the FTX collapse in November.

Tip: With the bipartisan support, seeds of the still-unannounced Congressional Blockchain Caucus for the 118th Congress may be appearing. Everyone attaching their name to this bill – except Rep. French Hill – was part of the caucus in the last Congress.
Continue reading “Bipartisan Crypto Action Seen With New IRS Reporting Fix; Grayscale And SEC Argue”

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Senate mining hearing

Today’s hearing on crypto mining will take place under the auspices of the Environment and Public Works’ Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate and Nuclear Safety led by Chair Sen. Ed Markey (D, MA). The Senate hearing is in support of Markey’s newly-reintroduced legislation, the “Crypto-Asset Environmental Transparency Act of 2023.”

• • See the March 3 press release.
  • And, view the bill (PDF).

Politico reports that the legislation would require the “EPA to investigate the [crypto] industry’s environmental impacts” among other elements of the bill. Read more. Rep. Jared Huffman (D, CA) is leading the legislative charge in the House. See the witnesses for today’s hearing here which starts at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Democrat urges legislation

In an interview with CoinTelegraph, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA), states her interest in getting crypto legislation done in the 118th Congress. She says, “The world is moving on crypto: different countries, different things we still have to think about… I do believe that […] it has to be a priority of ours.” Read more. Waters adds that she’s “still optimistic” on stablecoin legislation, too.

Tip: Waters is only the second Democrat in Congress – after Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) – to say something “pro-crypto-legislation” this year. Continue reading “Senate Takes On Crypto Mining; Rep. Waters Says It’s Time For Legislation”

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the stablecoin syllabus

Request: Amidst the anti-digital assets missives emanating from the White House in late January (such as The Administration’s Roadmap to Mitigate Cryptocurrencies’ Risks), The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (WHOSTP) put out a request for help with a “National Digital Assets R&D Agenda.”

Response: And, despite the WHOSTP glass-half-empty tweet announcing the initiative (digital assets are risky, but a CBDC sounds cool), Circle, who issues and maintains the USDC stablecoin, took the glass-half-full approach with its response.

Snippet: “Faster, Cheaper Payments with Programmable Money: Current financial architectures rely on often slow and expensive platforms — that necessitate the involvement of multiple intermediaries, parallel messaging through systems like SWIFT…” If you’re teaching a course in private stablecoins, this could be your syllabus – it integrates information from across the globe beginning with U.S. Treasury’s “The Future of Money and Payments” a key governmental response to President Biden’s Executive Order a year ago.

Tips:

• • WHOSTP request for information in the Federal Register
  • Circle’s blog post summarizing the response
  • The Circle response (PDF) 

what’s the Chair really like?

Capitol Account talks to former Republican Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Jill Sommers. She provides her opinion on what it was like working with former CFTC Chair and current SEC Chair Gary Gensler, a Democrat: “If you talk to anybody who’s a career employee at the SEC, they’ve probably never in their career seen anyone like him. It’s our understanding that a lot of the proposals [Gensler is putting out] are not even run through the staff and the divisions that typically would be writing those proposals. It’s all out of his office. That is not surprising.” Read more from Capitol Account. Continue reading “Circle Responds To White House With Stablecoin Treatise; Busy Week In DC”

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hearing – digital assets

House Financial Services (HFS) Chair Patrick McHenry (R, NC) has opened the HFS subcommittee floodgates on 118th Congress hearings beginning next week with topics championed by Republicans. See them.

The first hearing of the Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion Subcommittee with its Chair Rep. French Hill (R, AR) presiding will take place on Thursday, March 9 and echoes the partisan subterfuge theme of a recent letter sent to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, a Democrat, by the HFS Committee regarding the timing of the arrest of FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

The subcommittee hearing next week -“Coincidence or Coordinated? The Administration’s Attack on the Digital Asset Ecosystem” – appears to take aim at the “Operation Choke Point 2.0” theory that crypto companies are being unlawfully targeted. As of late, Senator Bill Hagerty (R, TN) on February 9 and blockchain technologist and investor Nic Carter on February 10 have suggested that the current “Operation Choke Point” operation is similar to the one which took place in 2013.

The subcommittee’s hearing information will appear here and will include the witness list and live webcast information.

Claiming the dissolution of bipartisan “vibes” when it comes to crypto legislation on the Hill, The New York Times’ DealBook blog says the “committee is having trouble getting companies to agree to participate in the hearing… Even with crypto executives calling for legislative action, few seem eager to engage in a highly political forum.” The subcommittee may want to invite the Fed, FDIC and OCC instead?

hearing – crypto commodity

The House Agriculture Committee may be dipping its toe back in the crypto end of the pool again as the full Committee announced a hearing for March 9 titled, “Rising Risks: Managing Volatility in Global Commodity Derivatives Markets.” See hearing’s event page.

(If you’re keeping score: House Ag is in the morning March 9; HFS Subcommittee on Digital Assets is in the afternoon.) Continue reading “Digital Assets Hearings Begin Next Week In House; Congress Sending Letters”

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now or never

Fearing the worst, American cryptocurrency platform Coinbase is taking its case to the American people. It’s now or never.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong began the day yesterday with an op-ed published on CNBC’s website expressing deep concern about regulatory momentum in the U.S. or lack thereof. At the same time, he offered hope, “By embracing crypto and other forms of digital finance, the U.S. can not only update its financial system, but also solidify its status as a geopolitical powerhouse.” Read more.

Then, during a televised appearance during CNBC’s morning show Squawk Box, Armstrong reiterated his plea for Congress to turn things around and that “new legislation is needed.” He added, “I’ve been spending more time in DC and what’s great to see is there’s strong bipartisan support for legislation. Everybody saw what happened to FTX and they said, “OK, there needs to be strong consumer protection. We also recognize that there’s innovation potential here and we don’t want this to be like 5G or the semiconductor industry that got moved offshore…'” See the interview. Armstrong identified 3 different “groups” in Congress which were actively creating crypto legislation.

Expect to see a lot of Coinbase in DC in the months ahead. This is about the company’s long-term survival. Continue reading “Coinbase CEO Armstrong Throws Down; Lummis-Gillibrand Return”

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new NFT cop?

With all the talk about being the “cop on the beat” among regulators, the CFTC announced yesterday that it was adding a new top cop, Ian McGinley, as its Enforcement Director who is described as having “…Significant Experience in Commodity Fraud, Crypto and Cyber Enforcement.” Read the release.

Last year, McGinley was named a “Cryptocurrency/Blockchain/Fintech Trailblazer” while practicing law for Akin Gump. In an interview at the time, McGinley said, “In February 2022, I wrote the first article highlighting the rapid growth of non-fungible tokens (NFT) and the likelihood of forthcoming prosecutions in the NFT space, given the hype and amount of money pouring into the industry. Those predictions were correct, as the Department of Justice has now charged three NFT cases.” Read the Q&A. Will NFTs become a new (or renewed) focus for the CFTC?

Tip #1: “Expect indictments in the NFT space soon” (PDF) – Reuters, Feb. ’22

Tip #2: The equivalent role in the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) would appear to be Gurbir Grewal, the Commission’s Director of Enforcement.

Republican CBDC concerns

With fellow House Republican leaders in the background, Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer released video of a speech he gave about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) amidst the drumbeat of his  new bill’s introduction – the “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act.” Emmer says in his speech, “This kind of digital currency (CBDCs) would give the federal government access to and control over literally every financial transaction conducted by Americans.” See it. Continue reading “New CFTC Enforcement Director Has NFT Interests; Republican CBDC Concerns Continue”