The Agriculture and Financial Services Committees of the US House of Representatives jointly developed a bill that would provide a legal framework for digital assets. The bill has been filed by Republican members of the two committees.
The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, a 212-page bill, was launched on July 20.
Notably, the bill is designed to close regulatory loopholes by developing guidelines for the “specific risks of various digital asset-related activities,” as per the written document.
The law establishes the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) authority over digital commodities, defines the SEC authority and establishes a procedure for the sale of digital assets that were initially classified as securities but are now marketed as commodities.
Decentralisation is the essential requirement for a digital asset to be classified as a commodity under the terms of the bill. Commodities of digital assets could be traded on platforms authorised by the SEC.
Moreover, Participants in the market may be required to register with both authorities and are subject to new and stricter disclosure rules.
Additionally, the organisations would have to collaborate with overseas regulators to develop uniform rules and regulations.
It would be necessary for the Government Accountability Office to finish research on nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and how they will integrate into conventional markets.
A day before the bill was introduced, cosponsors French Hill and Dusty Johnson criticised the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” of the cryptocurrency business in a letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler. The SEC policy was also emphasised in the introduction.
One of the papers read as follows, “The SEC’s current regulatory framework was not created to support the registration and oversight of digital assets. The SEC has fallen short of giving these organisations the operational clarity they require.”
Glenn Thompson, Tom Emmer, and Warren Davidson joined Warren Davidson as the bill’s additional proponents.
Prior to this year, the two-House committees started collaborating on a digital assets bill and conducted multiple joint meetings to be ready for it.
This bill would compete with the bipartisan Responsible Financial Innovation Act, which Sens. Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand unveiled last week in an updated edition.
