Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are seeking to introduce to the Senate a “slimmed-down” but “stronger” iteration of their prior cryptocurrency legislation.
They are “looking at” mid-April to introduce the new version of the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, Lummis said Thursday at the Milken Institute’s Future of Digital Assets Symposium in Washington, D.C.
The Republican senator, who described it as being “slimmed down” and “better looking,” said they are tweaking some of the definitions.
They have been working with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “address some of their concerns that there might be some unintended consequences to some of the definitions,” according to Lummis.
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She and Gillibrand have also been trying to tackle some regulatory and industry concerns on clarifying certain areas, Gillibrand said during the panel they shared.
The crypto legislation was first introduced by the two senators in the summer with the aim of creating a “complete regulatory framework for digital assets that encourages responsible financial innovation, flexibility, transparency and robust consumer protections while integrating digital assets into existing law,” according to a joint press release put out at the time.
The bill was subsequently referred to committee, according to Congress.gov.
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The senators also offered some glimpses into what the new version of the bill could look like this time around.
Gillibrand said they are aiming to “build out” a regulatory framework she said had been left for study in the initial version and to do a “deep dive” on stablecoin rules. There are considerations to, among other things, potentially expand on decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, in the bill, according to the Democratic senator.
The bill will be “stronger,” Gillibrand said, and will “address some of the things that happened with FTX so that it’s very clear if that was registered as a U.S. company, what it would have had to do and why consumers would not have been so harmed.”
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FTX, once one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and valued at $32 billion, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried awaits trial on a dozen criminal charges stemming from the firm’s rapid collapse.
Lummis said during Thursday’s panel she and Gillibrand were “working closely” with each other as well as with the House of Representatives and some other senators.