Next US Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott Calls Crypto ‘The Next Wonder of the World’

WASHINGTON, DC – The crypto industry got a promise of action from Republican US lawmakers on Tuesday, who will have the authority to move legislation on digital assets, with key members of the Senate and House of Representatives saying the sector will finally get what it has been waiting for in for years.

The incoming Republican chairman of the US Senate Banking Committee, Senator Tim Scott, and his counterpart on the House Financial Services Committee, Representative French Hill, were greeted with enthusiasm by a Blockchain Association crowd in Washington, in stark contrast to the uncertain tone of the same event last year. The two lawmakers said at the policy event that both chambers of Congress and President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will all be pulling in the same direction to make legislation happen.

The two starting points, they said, will be the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) — the bill to establish comprehensive safeguards for the crypto market that cleared the House this year by a wide bipartisan margin — and a stablecoin bill, there was close to a bipartisan deal but stalled over a few issues surrounding the role of the federal and state governments.

“Congress needs to do its job, find a compromise and fix things,” Hill said, hinting that his goal is to pass crypto market structure legislation — something “like FIT21” — in the first few months of the session.

It is a familiar message from the House side of Congress, but it is the Senate that had long been the source of opposition. Senator Scott will soon arrive in his committee chairmanship with a sharp reversal of Democratic predecessor Senator Sherrod Brown’s crypto suspicions.

“In my opinion, it’s the next wonder of the world,” he said, also promising that his panel would have a crypto offshoot. “I will be the chairman creating a digital assets subcommittee for the first time.”

Senator Brown, the incumbent, lost his Ohio Senate race in November, defeated by Republican Bernie Moreno, a blockchain businessman. Brown had been a key restraint on crypto progress in the Senate, although the new top Democrat on the committee will be Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive firebrand from Massachusetts who is expected to criticize crypto from the sidelines for the next few years.

Scott acknowledged, “She’s very good at what she does.”

But he said, “I think the future is incredibly bright,” and he said he’s already started conversations about crypto policy.

Scott also just met with David Sacks, Trump’s future crypto czar, the senator announced Tuesday in a statement that praised digital assets as having “the potential to democratize the financial world.”

Hill argued that crypto legislation cannot properly happen without broad bipartisan support.

“To win in the end, you need 60 votes in the Senate,” he noted. “You have to build consensus.”

Most Republicans have drifted into the crypto camp over the years, a trend that has accelerated since last year. But some Democrats — often younger lawmakers — have joined them, culminating in 71 Democrats for FIT21 in the House. But the Senate will be closely divided, with 53 Republicans to 47 Democrats, so both parties must be involved in any major initiative.

The role of the SEC

Also at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit on Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s two Republican commissioners — Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce — spoke about the changes they expect at the agency next year.

Uyeda criticized the agency’s crypto-accounting standard, the controversial Staff Accounting Bulletin no. 121 (SAB 121), which he said had “very, very far-reaching consequences” for a policy that did not go through the proper channels.

Peirce said that while the regulator is awaiting new digital asset laws from Congress, “we can say that some of these things are just outside of our jurisdiction.”

“We can certainly work closely with the CFTC,” she said. “We stand ready to work on things when it’s an opportunity. … I think there are a lot of places where we can help.”

The SEC’s sister regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is likely to play a bigger role in crypto in the future. That agency was represented at the same event by Republican Commissioner Summer Mersinger, who told the industry audience that it can expect a different future approach to enforcement.

“I’m not saying enforcement is going to go away,” she said. “What enforcement will focus on is fraud.”

UPDATE (December 17, 2024, 19:22 UTC): Adds statement on crypto czar meeting from Senator Scott and comment from CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger.