The House Financial Services Committee has published a draft bill that would regulate stablecoins. The bill proposes a moratorium on stablecoins backed by other crypto assets until a study is conducted and requests a study on a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The bill follows two major incidents involving stablecoins over the past year. The first was the fall of terraUSD (UST), which was backed by the LUNA token, and the second was the USD coin (USDC) temporarily not being backed by the dollar.
The moratorium on stable coins would last until a study is conducted.
The bill also calls for confidential briefings on, “implications for CBDCs, foreign and potentially from the United States, of the engagement of these organizations and governments in developing the standards being used or to be used for CBDCs.”
The bill further states that “the Secretary shall consider the following standards,” and one of those is, “interoperability among CBDCs and other public and private elements of the financial system.”
Finally, it adds that the “convertibility and availability for users, including methods by which users will hold and use CBDCs,” should also be explored.
We obtained a copy of the draft bill for you here.
On Wednesday, a House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on stablecoins. The hearing will feature Adrienne Harris, the superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services; Dante Disparte, of the Circle Internet Financial (the organization that issues USDC); Prof. Austin Campbell of the University of Columbia; and Jake Chervinsky, of the Blockchain Association.
A day before the hearing, the committee will meet with chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Gary Gensler.
A spokesperson for the chair of the committee, Rep. Patrik McHenry (R-NC), said that the bill has been doing rounds among legislators since last year before it was published on the committee’s website recently.
