Democrats maintained their pushback regarding the president’s involvement in crypto at a hearing hosted by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence.
“We cannot continue to ignore the clear conflicts of interest between the president's personal crypto ventures and his support of industry-friendly legislation,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the subcommittee.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the House Financial Services Committee ranking member, said she worked with former Committee Chair Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., in the last Congress to “try to come to some consensus about the guardrails that were needed to protect our investors as it relates to crypto.” However, she contended that now the committee “is helping Trump,” referencing the stablecoin bill the committee advanced last week.
In January, Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, also launched their own crypto tokens, often referred to as meme coins. In late February, as both Lynch and Waters pointed out, the SEC issued a staff statement from the division of corporation finance clarifying that the offer and sale of meme coins are not subject to federal securities laws.
Rep. French Hill R-Ark., the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, addressed Lynch directly later in the hearing, contending that “if we want to make sure that both stablecoins and digital assets are well-regulated, well-overseen, subject to the full force of both state and federal law enforcement and supervision, (then) we need to come together and pass our stablecoin legislation, as well as the revised version of a market structure bill.”
Hill and other Republicans have said they’re working to pass two crypto bills: one regulating stablecoins, and one they call a “market structure bill,” which would be an updated version of a bill that passed the House last year. Notably, the stablecoin bills advanced by both House and Senate committees in recent weeks have received some Democratic support, and the House-passed crypto bill received 71 votes from Democrats last Congress.
That bill, known as the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT 21 Act, would split jurisdiction of digital asset regulation so the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would gain new oversight of the digital commodities market, while the SEC works to oversee the digital securities market. The bill would also call on both agencies to propose joint rulemaking on digital assets and allow digital asset intermediaries to dually register with the SEC and CFTC.
Hill said April 9 that such legislation is needed to establish “clear rules of the road for digital asset markets,” as Republicans and crypto advocates have long said the industry suffers from regulatory uncertainty.
