Exciting Times in the House as for the FIRST TIME Crypto Legislation is Actually Moving

TL;DR I work in the House of Representatives and for the first time ever we are about to have legislation begin moving through Congress. Tomorrow the House Financial Service and Agriculture Committees are marking up (passing out of Committee) crypto legislation for the first time. This has never been done before but is a key step to seeing something actually be done.

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Some quick background before we get to the main topic since I have had to deal with various issues in the past. I do in fact work for Congress on a House Committee a lot of people doubt this and have come after me before for my comments but all that I am trying to do is to inform yall about what is going on. That being said I am currently reading the 212-page bill that will be voted on Wednesday but I am not through with it yet and want to cross all of my T's and dot my i's before I write on it so this is really the beginning of a mini-series that is going to cover what is going on. Without further ado...

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For as much as we have heard politicians talk about crypto legislation over the last couple of years people are often surprised to hear that hardly any of the ideas that are talked about are ever officially introduced. This means that really for all the ideas no politicians have made the daunting first move and instead have just talked about what they would do. Over the last two weeks though that has really changed and we have legislation being introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

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There are two things that I want to highlight that I think should get people extremely excited about what is going on. The first is that in the Senate we have finally gotten the long talked about and discussion drafts circulated bipartisan from Sen. Lummis and Sen. Gillibrand. Unlike other bills that have been discussed or introduced this one is not only bipartisan but it has pretty decent levels of support from both sides of the aisle.

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On the House side, there is even better news. No matter what chamber of Congress a bill is introduced in there are a series of steps that under normal circumstances they follow. These include sending the legislation to a Committee which will then hold a hearing on the topic and try to iron out all the issues and fine details that the legislation may face. Marking up the legislation is when the Committee holds a vote to send the legislation to either the House or Senate floor for a full vote, and finally, the chamber holds a full vote on the legislation. In the House, we have had several hearings already this Congress about the crypto industry that has resulted in Gary Gensler getting absolutely fried by both sides. Now for the first time, we are seeing a Committee hold a full vote to send the legislation to the floor for a full vote!

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While this legislation is solely introduced and cosponsored by the Republican Majority there are a few reasons to think that this could end up getting some Democrat votes in either the Committee markup or a full House vote. As we have seen in the last week with Rep. Torres of New York Democrats are done with the war that Gensler and the SEC have waged on crypto and are starting to come to the conclusion he and the SEC are not up to the job. Now a full vote would not likely happen until September as the House goes on Recess next Friday till after Labor Day in September this is nonetheless a huge and important step forward!

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According to my Senate friends, it is pretty much promised that this bill will not pass the Senate and instead, they will work on passing their own, most likely Sen. Lummis and Gillibrand bill. This will trigger a Conference like we had with the Chips and Science Act. Now in theory a Conference like this could fail but looking at the atmosphere on The Hill and really in the National Media there would be significant blowback on Congress if they fail to act. As first movers Republicans would really benefit if there was a collapse and failure as it would be a perfect "we tried and they wouldn't be reasonable so nothing was done" conversation. With 2024 being a Presidental Election Year as well I think that the Democratic Party is smart enough to try and avoid any stupid blowback like this would end up being.

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My fingers are crossed that we will get more answers by September/October since Conference can last up to 6 months and neither side wants to run this to close to the elections. As I mentioned earlier once I finish up going through this bill I will be sure to post my thought about it and what the good, bad, and ugly are about it!