US House Of Representatives Creates A New Crypto Congressional Subcommittee

The United States House of Representatives has established an exclusive congressional subcommittee to administer digital assets. This is considered to be one of the initial steps taken by the house under the Republican Party’s influence, as Patrick McHenry stated.

The new subcommittee will play the role of the initial subcommittee operating in the United States while particularly paying attention to digital assets.

House of Representatives Makes a Crypto-Focused Subcommittee

The committee will be controlled by the House Financial Services Committee. The purpose of this subcommittee’s establishment is to offer regulations for federal regulatory agencies in the case of digital assets.

In addition to this, it will also construct policies to advance technology related to digital finance along with fortifying the crypto industry’s inclusion and diversity, as mentioned in the press release.

The person to chair the respective subcommittee will be French Hill (a Republican Congressman). He has been actively participating in the endeavors related to the development of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for the United States. In a statement made on Thursday, Hill stated that this is a time of huge technological progress within the sector of finance.

In his words, they have to operate on this matter as well as make suitable innovations in the financial space in the US. Along with this, he added, the FinTech industry should also be allowed to innovate effectively and securely. The establishment of the latest subcommittee comes after an investigation by the House Financial Services Committee into the enormous crash of FTX.com.

The arriving chairman of the committee disclosed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had not taken substantial measures to stop bad people in the crypto world. The investigation was conducted during a spree of legal operations in the United States as policymakers hurried to cope with the regulatory vulnerabilities being faced after the FTX crash.

Back in December 2022, Elizabeth Warren (a US Senator) proposed a bill. The legislation would order the crypto businesses operating in the jurisdiction of the United States to abide by the Know-your-customer rules.

These rules are normally implemented by banking institutions to confront money laundering-related operations. As per McHenry, there is a huge hole in the organization of the committee.

In his words, the committee consumes additional resources on the subjects dealing with the world of digital assets rather than the bigger financial industry.

Apart from this committee’s formation, many other legislative measures are being currently taken to deal with the crypto sector. In this regard, Senators Gillibrand and Lummis presented their “Financial Innovation Act” back in 2022’s June.

More recently, “The Stablecoin TRUST Act” has been proposed by Patrick Toomey (another US Senator) during his Congressional tenure’s conclusive weeks. Hill, formerly co-sponsored the above-mentioned CBDC bill.

That legislation required the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors to examine a US CBDC’s likely impact. Hill labeled it as an “important work”.

The Subcommittee to Offer an All-Inclusive Crypto Agenda

A few Republican policymakers have been criticizing how the regulatory bodies have tackled the industry of digital assets. Tom Emmer (a Congressman), in this respect, voiced against the Gary Gensler-led SEC for its approach to regulating the industry through enforcement.

McHenry had asserted that the ecosystem of digital assets is a zone to be examined by the House Financial Committee for a full-fledged regulatory agenda under the new chairman.