U.S. Lawmaker at Center of Crypto Negotiation Predicts Digital Assets Law by Next Year

Patrick McHenry, chairman emeritus of the House Financial Services Committee, said he is confident crypto legacy will become permanent policy by 2025.

He said the crypto bill, called FIT21, is now a “consensus product” of the Parliament and cannot be ignored.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R.N.C.) promised that the crypto industry won’t wait long to get U.S. regulations now that the U.S. House of Representatives has shown the way.

“We will have crypto legislation within the next year, and I can say that with certainty,” McHenry, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told an audience at CoinDesk Consensus 2024 on Wednesday. “Crypto policy is inevitable and crypto law is inevitable.” “

Debating crypto legislation in the House of Representatives, McHenry argued that the outcome was assured by overwhelming bipartisan support for the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) from more than a third of the House last week. Democrats are showing up to vote yes, despite objections from the White House. He said the momentum will carry over to the next congressional session in 2025 if necessary, and will repeal the market structure bill and long-awaited legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers.

“We basically have a consensus product in the House of Representatives,” McHenry said. “This is a huge thing that we need to take advantage of and turn into law.”

Read More: US House Approves Crypto FIT21 Bill Riding a Wave of Democratic Support

Meanwhile, the top House lawmaker, who will retire from Congress at the end of the year, said he will continue trying to find a way to keep the legislation alive this year. While acknowledging that “the Senate is a more complex beast,” he said he would try to find a way to get the bill across the finish line and to President Joe Biden’s desk before it leaves Congress.

Asked if there was a specific bill that would need to be passed to tie this up, he said “anything and everything – that’s what I’m looking for.”

Earlier in the day at Consensus, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), a senior member of the Republican caucus, suggested that crypto legislation’s best chance of success is toward the end of this year, when Congress begins to emerge from this situation. session and into the next one – known as the lame duck session.

McHenry’s 2025 promise may have been tempered by the fact that he said something similar at the same Consensus event a year ago, but he explained Wednesday that there was no way to predict the chaos of House Republicans’ leadership struggles that overtook him. The substitute speaker effectively halted the legislative process for a short time.

The story continues

As U.S. lawmakers and cryptocurrency executives gathered at Consensus in Austin, Texas, to talk about current events in crypto — often criticizing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s approach — the regulator issued a new warning about crypto scams on Wednesday.

“Fraudsters often use innovations and new technologies to commit investment fraud, and this also applies to investments related to cryptoasset securities,” the agency said in its newest alert.