Sunday, October 16, 2022

Rep. McHenry reported on the progress of work on stablecoin legislation.

Patrick McHenry, a senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, said "fintech talk has reached a dead end" and the real issues need to be revisited. He is currently negotiating legislation that could, at least in theory, bring more clarity to the legal treatment of stablecoins. There is currently no federal definition of digital assets or stablecoins in the US, McHenry said, calling the situation "retrograde." McHenry, House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, and the Treasury have been negotiating legislation for months. "We are negotiating an asset, that is, a narrowly defined set of assets, 1:1 collateral, no leverage. [..] Then we move on to more complex conversations."

Speaking at DC Fintech Week, which we wrote about earlier, McHenry called the unresolved issues of "the means by which we hold" stablecoins, the regulation of wallets and the definition of a federal regulator for them. These solutions should, in practice, contain "less science, more art," he said. According to McHenry, the resulting draft law is "pretty crude, but could grow into something more attractive."

McHenry said that if he becomes chairman of the Financial Services Committee after the midterm elections, he will make cryptocurrency regulation a priority. By the way, McHenry can still become chairman of the committee if the Republican Party wins a majority in the House of Representatives. Waters, who spoke briefly at the same conference the day before, also mentioned stablecoins and the issue of digital wallets. He stressed the need to make the technology user-friendly, especially since "people are often excluded from the traditional financial system."

On October 3, the Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Board called on lawmakers to pass a law that places regulatory responsibility for cryptocurrencies on regulators. There are already many bills in place to regulate cryptocurrencies, including the draft Digital Consumer Protection Act of 2022, the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act, and the Digital Commodity Exchange Act of 2022.

The absence of a legal framework does not prevent the self-proclaimed "regulatory" bodies from considering themselves the spokesman for the interests of all investors in the US and the world. And all the time to give even more importance to both your own words and not always adequate actions and interpretations. All new people who want to "steer" crypto assets are joining the fight. So, the head of the OCC (US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), Michael Hsu, became concerned that lawmakers were spending "too much time on cryptocurrency" and not on more pressing issues: i.e. technologies and banking, which even there can allegedly be entrusted, including to his department (Hsu has been the head of the OCC since May 2021 and is the administrator of the federal banking system and the chief economic director of the OCC).

During his tenure, Hsu called for increased oversight of crypto firms and stablecoin standards, and stressed the need for a cautious approach to crypto regulation due to the industry's rapid growth red flags, arguing that there are other areas as well. which need to be focused on right now, especially with regard to financial technologies, which require immediate control due to their constant development.

Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), in its quest for power over the spot markets of cryptocurrencies, is merging with the SEC in a fit of love passion. Speaking at an event at Georgetown University, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler backed the idea of ​​granting Congress more direct authority over certain tokens to the U.S. commodity regulator he previously chaired. The CFTC itself has pushed for direct management of digital assets that US regulators classify as commodities. They currently consist of bitcoin and ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, although Gensler suggested last month that the latter could be a security.

Accordingly, possible investments in cryptocurrencies that provide a stable income that obviously exceeds inflationary expectations and does not fall under any sanctions, blocking and confiscation and with constant payments of passive income in USDT are becoming more and more reliable. Due to this circumstance, the ASTL project - a simple and elegant solution for potential investors with a fairly high ROI (up to 18%) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) is becoming more and more popular.


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