Report: House Stablecoin Bill Put on Hold

U.S. lawmakers have put a bill designed to deal with the risks posed by stablecoins on hold, likely for the rest of the summer.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday (July 25) — citing unnamed sources — that lawmakers in the U.S. House who had been working on a draft of the bill were unable to come up with a finished product ahead of a scheduled committee vote Wednesday (July 27).

A deal on the bill would have meant the first major step to crack down on the cryptocurrency industry, spurred by concerns that current laws don’t offer proper standards for digital assets. The Biden administration and the legislators backing the bill have warned of potential risks posed by stablecoins, a cryptocurrency designed to be pegged to the dollar or another national currency.

The Journal report said lawmakers and their staff had worked all weekend trying to finalize the bill, which remained unfinished Monday morning.

Among the issues still to be ironed out included standards for custodial wallets, one of the sources said, adding that U.S. Treasury officials had proposed wallet provisions that House Republicans were not ready to accept.

See also: House Committee Close to Vote on ‘Payments Stablecoin’ Bill

PYMNTS reported last week that bipartisan leaders on the committee had reached an agreement on the key terms of the bill, which envisions the dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies becoming a mainstream payments rail.

As much as 95% of all stablecoin transactions are used in trading other cryptocurrencies, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said recently.

While sponsors of a larger bill that creates a broad crypto regulatory framework acknowledged last week that it will have to wait until 2023, the urgency stemming from the $48 billion collapse of the Terra/LUNA stablecoin ecosystem in a week-long run this spring seems to have led lawmakers to agree that a stablecoin framework can’t wait.

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