According to reports, the United States House of Representatives, led by the Republican party, is preparing to revisit three pivotal cryptocurrency bills on Wednesday. This comes after a planned re-vote was postponed on Tuesday due to multiple Republican legislators withdrawing their support, with a central focus on their desire to include a prohibition on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, expressed his eagerness to push forward a procedural vote for the bills on Wednesday. He highlighted the importance of these cryptocurrency bills to the White House, the Senate, and the House, as reported by Politico.
A faction of Republicans sought to modify or consolidate the GENIUS Act, which regulates stablecoins, with two other crypto bills scheduled for a vote this week. These include the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act, which bans CBDCs, and the CLARITY Act, an extensive crypto market structure bill. Johnson, however, emphasized the need for these bills to be passed sequentially, hinting that the Senate might not approve the bills if bundled together.
The ‘Crypto Week’, a Republican initiative aimed at implementing crypto laws before the Congress’ month-long break in August, is driving the push to pass these bills. Conversely, Democrats have declared an “anti-crypto corruption week” in opposition to the proposed legislation.
Following Tuesday’s vote, Representatives Biggs, Burchett, Green, Luna, and Spartz clarified that while they were not against the crypto bills, they were unwilling to support the GENIUS Act unless it incorporated a specific CBDC ban.
Speaker Johnson is reportedly in talks with the dissenting Republicans to push the legislation forward. However, he admitted that the demand of the ‘no’ voters to merge the three crypto bills into a single package is a point of dispute.
The House is due to reconvene on Wednesday for a morning debate and other legislative activities. Despite the initial failure to pass the legislation, Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, reassured that there’s no cause for alarm, citing the GENIUS Act’s initial failure in the Senate as an example.
In conclusion, the GENIUS Act, which initially failed a cloture vote in the Senate due to Democratic opposition, later passed through the Senate with bipartisan support in June.
