Senator Lummis stated that it will take some time for senators who are unfamiliar with crypto to comprehend and process the crypto bill.
According to the two U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis (Republican) and Kirsten Gillibrand (Democrat), the significant bipartisan crypto bill would likely be postponed until next year.
The Senators said there is a remote possibility that the full law would be passed by the Senate this year when speaking at Bloomberg’s Crypto Summit on July 19. Lummis noted that:
“I think both Kirsten and I believe that the bill, in one piece, as a total bill is more likely to be deferred until next year. It’s a big topic, it’s comprehensive, and it’s still new to many U.S. Senators and so it’s a lot for them to digest in the few remaining weeks we have in this calendar year.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the banking industry, the taxation of digital assets, and interagency cooperation are all covered under the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, which was presented in the U.S. Senate on June 6.
The two pointed out that certain provisions of their bill might be included in other legislation that passes this year. Gillibrand mentioned that fellow Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow and Republican ranking member John Boozman are working on a bill that would designate the CFTC as the primary regulator for cryptocurrencies.
When it comes to the classification of the majority of digital assets as commodities and their consequent placement under the CFTC’s purview, the bill incorporates certain provisions from the Lummis/Gillibrand Act.
Lummis added that their bill’s section dealing with the control of stablecoins issued by financial institutions might be combined with one from the banking committee and put to a vote this year.
The senators noted that both sides of the political spectrum have responded to the crypto bill largely favorably.
“There seems to be some serious common ground forming, and just as Senator Lummis said, the two committees that have the most focused Senators on this topic are banking and agg [agriculture],” Gillibrand said, adding that there’s also been some focus from the finance committee as “Senator Wyden and his committee wrote a good part of the tax provisions in our bill.”
The two acknowledge that it will take some time for their comprehensive crypto bill to receive the right attention before it is voted on next year, but Gillibrand emphasized that her fellow senators, regulators, and lawmakers are starting to recognize the urgency of at least putting consumer protections in place:
“There’s additional interest now, because they’ve seen that this is something important to do, that consumers are not being protected today, there’s no oversight or accountability, and there’s no rules of the road.”
“So there’s more urgency now, and also more of a sense that this is something we need to do,” she added.
The remarks were made in light of the recent bankruptcy procedures of cryptocurrency loan companies like Celsius and Voyager, which have put consumers at a high risk of losing the money they invested on such platforms.
Additionally, Lummis mentioned the $40 billion Terra ecosystem collapse in May and the algorithmic stablecoins’ dangerous nature, which calls for more regulation.
