Latest news with #DigitalAssetMarketClarityAct
UPI
5 days ago
- Business
- UPI
Industry praises slate of crypto bills, economists unsure of promise
July 25 (UPI) -- Congress and President Donald Trump have taken steps toward regulating digital currency with the passage of a package of bills on Capitol Hill. Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act and, or GENIUS Act, into law last week, establishing a framework for regulating stablecoin, a form of cryptocurrency that is backed by a stable asset. Industry stakeholders are applauding the law, saying it will enable the United States to be a leader in digital finance. Economists are not unanimously convinced that it will be the consumer-focused game-changer it is made out to be. "The passage of the GENIUS Act represents an important step toward establishing a clear regulatory foundation for the digital asset industry in the United States," Paolo Ardoino, CEO of pioneering cryptocurrency company Tether, said in a statement to UPI. "The U.S. now has the opportunity to reassert its leadership in digital finance by supporting open networks and programmable money. Stablecoins have become essential infrastructure in global markets, powering dollar access, enhancing cross-border settlements, and strengthening financial resilience." The GENIUS Act is just one piece of legislation that underlines lawmakers' interest in establishing guidelines for the realm of digital finance. The House passed two more bills last week relating to cryptocurrency: the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and the Anti-CBDC Act. Both must pass the Senate to become law. Aaron Klein, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told UPI that, when considering these actions together, a signal is being sent to consumers that cryptocurrency is here to stay. "It's something the government is passively and explicitly supporting," Klein said. "The enthusiasm by Congress and by the president personally issuing his own crypto for his own financial gain is a giant signal for the American public. Many of them will see this as a green light and won't look at the fine print." GENIUS Act The GENIUS Act will enable the government to regulate the licensure and permissions for stablecoin companies to offer and sell stablecoin in the United States. It also enables the federal government to enforce regulations with the use of fines and imprisonment for violations. Companies seeking to issue stablecoin are required to have the capital to back them up. They must also meet reporting and auditing requirements. In terms of U.S. interests, U.S.-regulated stablecoin could extend access to the U.S. dollar across the world due to its requirement that it is backed by the dollar or Treasury bills. "What's going to happen is this creates a new market but also a passive demand for U.S. government debt," Joshua Robert Hendrickson, professor of economics at Ole Miss, told UPI. "By doing so it potentially weakens the mechanism by which rising debt tends to lead to higher borrowing costs." The law sets the stage for broader adoption of stablecoin, Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, told UPI. "No bill is perfect, but this is a great starting point for mainstream adoption to begin," Catalini said. "I'm sure there will be further adjustments along the way as we learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the current law." Licensing will not be limited to traditional financial institutions. Fintech companies can also seek permission to issue stablecoins. "I expect lots of entry by U.S. banks, fintechs and digital wallets," Catalini said. "Some foreign fintechs and neobanks will use this as an opportunity to expand their U.S. presence and services." Klein said he is waiting to see how foreign companies will be treated by federal regulators. He believes the GENIUS Act does not establish strong enough guardrails to ensure that foreign companies, such as Tether, are held to the same auditing standards as U.S. companies. "One of the big loopholes in the GENIUS Act is the ability to certify to an American standard that the stablecoin issuers' audited financial statements are accurate and of high-quality," Klein said. "The first test of the GENIUS Act will come in how the foreign-issued stablecoins like Tether are treated in their auditing. Because Tether does not use U.S. auditing standards for their account." Klein is also unconvinced that stablecoin adoption will greatly improve America's payment systems. Real-time bank transactions have been a reality in Brazil, Mexico, England and Japan for years and in some cases decades. The United States passed the Expedited Funds Availability Act in 1987. One of its purposes was to require financial institutions to speed up making deposited funds available. This set maximum hold periods and generally requires cash and electronic deposits to be made available within the next business day. "You don't need stablecoins to have real-time payments," Klein said. "You need a Federal Reserve that cares about working people which we haven't seen for decades. Instead the Federal Reserve has prioritized bank profits from overdraft fees over helping people have access to their own money." Having the bill signed into law does not guarantee its effectiveness, Klein adds. It is up to federal regulators to create and adopt policies that they will then execute. There have been instances when the execution fell short, leaving consumers exposed. In 1994, the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act was passed to establish consumer protections against predatory home lending practices. It called on federal regulators to regulate prime subprime mortgages. More than a decade later, the rise in subprime mortgage lending culminated in the Great Recession. "In 1994, Congress passed a law requiring the Federal Reserve to regulate subprime mortgages and they didn't do it," Klein said. "Alan Greenspan said we don't need to regulate this market. Look how that worked out." Bills advancing in Congress The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency. The Federal Reserve explored the potential risks and benefits associated with establishing a central bank digital currency under an executive order signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., sponsored the bill in the House. On the House floor prior to the vote, he said the impetus for the bill is a concern that a Federal Reserve-issued digital dollar would be used to track consumers. "Unlike decentralized digital assets, a CBDC is a digital form of sovereign currency that is designed, issued, and monitored by the federal government," Emmer said. "It is government-controlled programmable money that, if designed without the privacy protections of cash, this could give the federal government the ability to surveil and restrict Americans' transactions and monitor every aspect of our daily lives. In other words, every dollar you spend, where you spend it, who you spend it with would all be visible to and tracked by the watchful eyes of Washington." According to Hendrickson, a centralized digital currency offers a solution where there is no problem. "One of the things that people say would be a benefit of a central bank currency, they point to the number of people who don't have bank accounts," Hendrickson said. " They say it would give greater access to FDIC services. If people don't have bank accounts, when you ask them why their number one reason is they don't trust banks. So it's unclear why they would trust a central bank." "I don't think people want to give up that degree of privacy," he continued. When the U.S. Treasury Department encouraged the Biden administration to continue studying the potential of a government-issued digital dollar, it highlighted the importance of innovation done carefully. "It's kind of been sold as this technological innovation but there's no technology necessary," Hendrickson said. "Just giving more people access to their ledger is not a form of technology." Like the GENIUS Act, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is meant to put a regulatory framework in place for cryptocurrency. It does so by codifying oversight responsibilities and defining what is considered a digital commodity. Oversight responsibilities would belong to the Securities Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The SEC's role would be in regulating cryptocurrency offered as investment options, such as cryptocurrency that is offered as part of an investment contract. The high-profile collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023 and the FTX fraud scandal that began to unfurl in 2022 pushed the need for regulation to the forefront, Hendrickson said. "At the time what was really happening was all regulation of cryptocurrency was happening through SEC enforcement," he said. "You would find out that you broke a rule when the SEC brought charges against you. That's not an effective way to regulate an industry. The collapse of FTX was a catalyst for both politicians and people in the industry to say, look, now is the time to get a regulatory framework in place for these kinds of things."
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
The CLARITY Act: A Turning Point For The Gaming Industry
Chris Hewish, Xsolla's Chief Strategy Officer, leads the gaming business engine, offering 700+ payment methods in 200+ regions. For years, companies working in blockchain, crypto and Web3 have been trying to balance momentum with caution. Even as innovation has exploded in these sectors, regulation has struggled to keep up. Agencies like the SEC and CFTC are operating from decades-old laws that never imagined digital tokens or decentralized protocols, let alone in-game NFTs. The result is a gray area where it's not clear what is acceptable or not and how that might change at any moment. Without structure, it's challenging to create meaningful plans, particularly when attempting to attract institutional investors and enterprise players. That's where the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025—CLARITY for short—comes in. If you care about the future of the U.S. economy, and in particular its role in emerging digital markets, this bipartisan bill is worth watching. Why We Need CLARITY Uncertainty is a significant hindrance to innovation. In a world of legal ambiguity and regulation by enforcement, developers spend more time asking what's allowed than actually building. It's already forcing companies to freeze new blockchain features or avoid Web3 integration entirely. The U.S. is behind the curve. Without a clear path forward, we're losing jobs and long-term market share to more crypto-friendly regions. While other countries are giving developers and investors a clear green light, we're still debating which agency has jurisdiction. That leads to brain drain, capital flight and a growing sense that if you want to innovate, you should consider doing it somewhere else. The CLARITY Act is the first serious, bipartisan attempt to solve this problem by providing a regulatory framework for digital assets. It clearly defines what counts as a security and what doesn't, and it gives primary regulatory authority to the CFTC for most digital commodities, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs and stablecoins. By overriding conflicting state laws with a unified federal approach, it gives everyone from startups to major institutions one consistent set of rules. Legal experts describe it as a path to compliance, a roadmap that developers, investors and exchanges can actually follow. With the CLARITY Act, we get a framework that supports responsible innovation without drowning it under outdated red tape. Why Gaming Is The Catalyst The gaming industry has been an early adopter of Web3 technologies, from player-owned assets to tokenized economies to virtual commerce. We've seen companies like Immutable build out entire Layer 2 blockchains just for Web3 games. These are functioning, growing ecosystems with real users and real transactions. Gaming offers a way to normalize Web3 by embedding it into something familiar that already works at scale. That's why we believe gaming can lead the way in Web3 adoption. Not only are we early users of these technologies, but we also have the commercial track record to turn them into viable products. With clear rules in place, U.S.-based game studios can confidently pursue new Web3 features, attracting investment and bringing those jobs and opportunities back home. This is a pivotal moment for the industry, a chance to help shape the conversation, not just follow it. At Xsolla, we've submitted official letters of support and shared our perspective publicly. We're also organizing roundtables to connect lawmakers and the gaming community, so regulators can hear directly from the people building the future of entertainment. While the CLARITY Act still has to clear several legislative hurdles, the momentum is there. And the gaming industry is ready to lead. We've already embraced tokenization, creator economies and digital goods in ways that make Web3 real for millions of users. This bill presents a real opportunity to reset the playing field, shifting from ambiguity to accountability. We can finally stop penalizing innovation and start rewarding it. Above all, we can maintain the next wave of technological leadership here in the U.S. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
The Hill
22-07-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Trump's AI plan
A group of Republican senators unveiled draft legislation Tuesday laying out their vision for regulation of the crypto market. After passing stablecoin legislation last month — which President Trump signed into law Friday — the upper chamber is now turning its attention to the broader digital assets market. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) released the discussion draft on the heels of the House's passage of its own market structure bill. The House voted 294-134 on Thursday to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, after GOP leadership managed to fend off a revolt from competing factions of the conference. 'My colleagues and I in the House and Senate share the same goal: to provide clear rules of the road for digital assets that protect investors, foster innovation, and keep the future of digital finance anchored in America,' Scott said in a statement. 'I'm grateful for the hard work of our House counterparts to craft smart, bipartisan legislation, and I look forward to building on their work here in the Senate,' he continued. The key focus of crypto market structure legislation is splitting up oversight between two financial regulators — the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Senate discussion draft seeks to clarify when digital assets are not securities, in addition to creating disclosure requirements for the assets and directing the SEC to put forward new rules and modernize some existing regulations.
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
House passes crypto market structure bill after GOP revolt
The House passed legislation Thursday laying out regulatory rules for the crypto industry, after GOP leadership managed to stem a revolt from competing factions in the conference that brought the floor to a standstill and left the crypto legislation in limbo. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act cleared the House in a 294-134 vote, with 78 House Democrats joining all Republicans to support it. Its passage comes at the end of a rollercoaster 'crypto week' in the House, during which GOP leadership had hoped to easily pass a trio of digital asset bills. However, a group of hard-line Republicans revolted Tuesday, tanking a procedural vote and prompting President Trump to step in. He struck a deal with the lawmakers, but it ultimately failed to stem the rebellion and angered other members. The agreement would have added language from the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC), to the broader crypto bill. After hours of negotiations and the longest House vote on record, leadership agreed to add the anti-CBDC provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), giving it a better chance of reaching Trump's desk. Most of the remaining Republican holdouts changed their votes to 'yes,' allowing the House to adopt the rule governing debate and unfreezing the floor. The crypto market structure bill, sometimes referred to as the Clarity Act, aims to provide clear rules for the crypto market by drawing bright lines between oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The industry has long sought legislation to help delineate when digital assets are considered securities or commodities and, as a result, which financial regulator they fall under. This became a key issue in the Biden administration, when former SEC Chair Gary Gensler brought numerous enforcement actions against crypto firms that accused him of failing to provide clear rules and attempting to regulate by enforcement. The House passed an earlier iteration of the market structure bill, called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, last May, with 71 Democrats joining most Republicans to support the legislation. However, the Senate never took up the bill. Now, attention is once again turning back to the upper chamber, as it prepares to release its own discussion draft on crypto market structure. Meanwhile, the House also passed the GENIUS Act — Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act — which would establish a regulatory framework for payment stablecoins. The bill, which cleared the Senate last month, next heads to Trump's desk after being approved by the lower chamber in a 308-122 vote. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump announces agreement to end House floor revolt over crypto bills
President Trump said late Tuesday that he has reached a deal with most of the House Republicans who derailed a procedural vote earlier in the day, putting a trio of cryptocurrency bills on a path to consideration in the lower chamber. The announcement — made on Truth Social — came after Trump said he met with 11 out of 12 of the House Republicans who torpedoed the procedural vote Tuesday afternoon, which brought the floor to a screeching halt. 'I am in the Oval Office with 11 of the 12 Congressmen/women necessary to pass the GENIUS Act and, after a short discussion, they have all agreed to vote tomorrow morning in favor of the Rule,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was at the meeting via telephone, and looks forward to taking the Vote as early as possible,' he added. 'I want to thank the Congressmen/women for their quick and positive response. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' It remains unclear what assurances the dozen Republicans received to win over their support for the procedural rule. Republican 'no' votes included Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (Fla.), Scott Perry (Pa.), Chip Roy (Texas), Victoria Spartz (Ind.), Michael Cloud (Texas), Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Andy Harris (Md.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Keith Self (Texas) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.). House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) switched his vote to 'no' as a procedural move to allow the chamber to revote on the measure at a later date. 'I'm thankful for President Trump getting involved tonight to ensure that we can pass the GENIUS Act tomorrow and agreeing again to help us advance additional crypto legislation in the coming days. Much more to come,' Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday. The agreement, if it holds, nonetheless, will allow the House to adopt a procedural rule and move forward with consideration of the three cryptocurrency bills and a measure to fund the Pentagon for fiscal 2026 as early as Wednesday, putting the chamber back on track after Tuesday's hiccup. The chief concern among the hard-line contingent was the lack of a provision in the GENIUS Act that would block the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The bill, which aims to create a regulatory framework for dollar-backed digital tokens known as stablecoins, is the most likely to become law after clearing the Senate last month. While the House is also set to consider the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would bar the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, the measure seems unlikely to gain traction in the Senate. Trump, who has become a key ally of the crypto industry in his second term, has urged the House to quickly pass a 'clean' stablecoin bill, frustrating efforts by lawmakers to tweak the legislation or tie it to another measure, such as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which would divide oversight of the broader crypto market between two financial regulators, is also up for consideration by the House this week. However, the Senate appears poised to propose its own market structure legislation. Votes on rules — which govern debate on measures — are typically mundane, party-line efforts in which members of the majority party vote in favor and those in the minority party vote in opposition. In recent years, however, some Republicans have used the procedural votes to express their displeasure with legislation or leadership. Updated at 10 p.m. EDT Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
