The end of 2022 is fast approaching. The midterm elections are in less than three weeks, so we won’t see much legislative action for a little bit. Here’s where current legislative efforts stand.
The House Financial Services stablecoin bill:
We’ve been hearing a lot about this bill’s development, but at this point it sure seems like it’ll be a 2023 effort. We might still see some kind of draft legislative language introduced this year, but that’s about it.
At DC Fintech Week last week, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the ranking member of the committee, said he and Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) agreed on how they defined the term “stablecoin” and what the components of the asset include, but suggested that there's still work to be done on other issues like how to assign a federal regulator.
Moreover, at CoinDesk’s IDEAS conference in New York, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) explicitly said the bill is not happening this year, and is not likely to happen in the early part of 2023.
The Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act:
The DCCPA is the Stabenow-Boozman bill introduced to the Senate Agriculture Committee by senators Deborah Stabenow (D-Mich.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.) that, if passed, would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission some more regulatory oversight jurisdiction of crypto spot markets.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is a cosponsor on the bill, said she expects a markup to occur before the end of the year. In speaking to others, this does seem like it may actually happen, though passage is still a question mark.
If you’ll indulge in some rumor proliferation, the big one right now is that this bill may get attached to the National Defense Authorization Act or another broad bill before the end of the year. I haven’t heard any concrete confirmation of this one way or another, but at the least it does seem like we’ll hear more from this bill before the year’s up.
