Father of Crypto Bills, French Hill, Says Market Structure Effort Should Tweak GENIUS

U.S. Representative French Hill is among his House of Representatives colleagues watching from the sidelines as their Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is overhauled by senators, but he and Senator Cynthia Lummis seem to be in agreement that one of the bill's aims should be to re-cast what Congress already did on stablecoins.

So far, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act is the marquee accomplishment for the crypto industry and its lawmaker allies in Washington. As the new law of the land, federal regulators are already beginning work to implement its oversight of U.S. stablecoin issuers.

But that was a bill authored in the Senate after years of work in the House on similar texts, so when the House passed its Clarity Act this year on crypto market structure, it tied to that bill some changes to GENIUS. The tweaks outlined in Section 512 at the very tail end of that legislation include:

• A more detailed section on holding CEOs and chief financial officers legally liable to routinely disclose accurate financial data, adding an annual check from an accounting firm as a backstop for the issuers' internal controls;
• A more detailed prohibition on non-financial companies getting into the stablecoin business;
• And assurance that a U.S. investor can "maintain a hardware wallet or software wallet for the purpose of facilitating the individual’s own lawful custody of digital assets," and can engage in peer-to-peer transactions.

"We just thought these were ways to make GENIUS stronger and better, based on work we've done in the House," Hill said in an appearance this week at CoinDesk's Policy and Regulation event in Washington.

On the sidelines of that same event, Senator Cynthia Lummis, the staunch crypto advocate who heads the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee, said that she anticipates the Senate's eventual market structure bill will modify the young stablecoin law. She said she wants to "be very respectful of the House's amendments."

"So I do think that there will be some language that changes GENIUS," she said.

Later, at a Cato Institute event on Thursday, Hill got into the topic again, saying, "I prefer the House version, but we were able to work between the two houses to outline a few changes that we would make to GENIUS, and we put them in the Clarity Act."

The Senate Banking Committee's Republicans recently released a draft version of their bill and some senators, including Lummis, still talk about finishing their bill by the end of this month. Though its House counterpart cleared that chamber with a massive bipartisan vote — 308-122 — at least one of the Republicans on that committee, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, has expressed reservations about the readiness of the Senate's work.

While Hill noted that the Senate committee hasn't been working on these topics as long as the House, "I think they can get this done," he said. Work teams from both parties in the Senate are toiling away, he said, "and they are collaborating to get to yes."

The timeline now in mind for crypto advisers in the administration, including Tyler Williams at the Treasury Department, is turning the market structure effort into law by the end of this year — the target currently offered by Lummis.

Read More: Senators Still Hopeful for Crypto Market Structure Law by End of Year