Current Status of the Crypto Legislation on Capitol Hill

An update on where crypto legislation stands on Capitol Hill. This week has been the first time that the House of Representatives has been in session since the House Financial Services passed through a ton of various bipartisan GOOD crypto legislation. Instead of what you tend to hear about these bills were rather hands-off and focused instead on limiting government interference and moving a lot of the regulatory power from the SEC to the CFTC, a huge huge win.

​

However, as I noted back when these bills were passed through Committee there was a huge issue standing in the way of them being taken up on the House Floor... The U.S. government's fiscal year ends at the end of September and Congress has not passed a united fiscal year 2024 spending bill. While the Senate has been able to pass almost all the different appropriations bills the House has struggled to pass just a single one of the twelve bills required. This week the House was expected to pass its version of the National Defense Authorization Act a historically easy-to-pass piece of legislation but the House has not adjourned till next Monday due to Republican infighting.

​

Understandably both chambers of Congress, the House and the Senate, are focused more on funding the government than anything else. That means though that even though the crypto legislation is ready to go in the House and has bipartisan support it will be on hold until this funding is addressed at least to prevent an Oct. 1st shutdown. Talking to people it does seem that at the end of the day, something is going to be passed to avert a shutdown even if it is just continuing funding until December of this year. As annoying as this is for the industry I will say at least your paychecks are not in danger of stopping if the worst-case scenario comes into play for Hill staff like myself.

​

It is not a matter of if anymore with this crypto legislation it is a matter of when. The House is going to clear these bills and send them over to the Senate where the Dem majority on that side is going to be in a bind as these bills will go to them with bipartisan support. Senators like Chairman Brown from Ohio will be further pushed to stop his anti-crypto nonsense because it makes the Dem Senators look bad and public polling for these bills is on the House's side. At the end of the day, the guy does want to keep his job!