U.S. Senate Moves Forward with Stablecoin Bill

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has moved forward the crypto industry’s stablecoin bill, a major step toward getting American President Donald Trump to sign the legislation into law.

The bill, which would regulate U.S. stablecoin issuers at the federal level, now needs to be passed in a vote by the entire Senate. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the legislation in a vote of 18 to six. Stablecoins are crypto whose price is tied to an underlying asset, typically the U.S. dollar or gold.

Many Democrats on the committee acknowledged the need for the bill while also seeking to add amendments that provide additional regulatory controls and limits, each of which was rejected with partisan votes cast by Republican lawmakers.

The two largest stablecoins are Circle’s USDC (USDC) and Tether’s USDT (USDT), which is the dominant stablecoin with a market capitalization of $142 billion.

Supportive Measures

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the panel’s ranking Democrat, led her colleagues’ objections against certain provisions of the bill, which she said represent “a clear threat to our national security.” However, all of Warren’s proposed amendments to the bill were rejected.

The cryptocurrency industry is counting on an increasingly strong majority of lawmakers in both chambers to back its policies under the Trump administration. A separate effort to remove an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule that was opposed by the crypto sector recently won wide support in the Senate and lower House of Representatives.

Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. were previously reluctant to move forward with most crypto legislation. However, the election last November put Republicans in charge of both chambers of Congress, and the ranking Republican Party has made stablecoin legislation one of its top priorities.

Is BTC a Buy?

Most Wall Street firms don’t offer ratings or price targets on stablecoins, so we’ll look at the three-month performance of Bitcoin (BTC) instead. As one can see in the chart below, the price of BTC has declined 22.83% in the last 12 weeks.