WASHINGTON, DC – The crypto industry received a promise of action on Tuesday from Republican U.S. lawmakers who will have the power to pass digital assets legislation. Key members of the Senate and House of Representatives said the sector will finally get what it has been expecting for years.

The new 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 sharp contrast to the uncertain tone of the election was the same event last year. The two lawmakers said at the political event that both chambers of Congress and President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will all pull together to implement the legislation.

The two starting points, they said, will be the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) — the bill to establish comprehensive guardrails for the crypto market that passed the House of Representatives with a large bipartisan majority this year — and a stablecoin bill was close to reaching a cross-party agreement, but stalled due to some contentious issues surrounding the role of the federal and state governments.

“Congress needs to do its job, find a compromise and get things right,” Hill said, indicating that his goal is to pass legislation on the structure of the crypto market — something like “ FIT21” – to say goodbye.

That’s a familiar message from lawmakers in the House of Representatives of Congress, but it is the Senate that has long been the source of resistance. Senator Scott will soon assume his committee chairmanship and significantly reverse the crypto suspicions of his Democratic predecessor, Senator Sherrod Brown.

“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 to establish a subcommittee on digital assets for the first time.”

Senator Brown, the current leader, lost his Ohio Senate bid in November to Republican Bernie Moreno, a blockchain businessman. Brown has been a major stumbling block to crypto progress in the Senate, although the committee’s new top Democrat will be Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive firebrand from Massachusetts who is expected to vocally criticize crypto from the sidelines for the next few years .

Scott confirmed: “She’s very good at what she does.”

But he said, “I think the future is incredibly bright,” and he said he has already begun discussions about crypto policy.

Scott also just met with David Sacks, Trump’s new crypto czar, the senator announced Tuesday in a statement praising digital assets as having “the potential to democratize finance.”

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

“Ultimately, to win 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 — joined them, resulting in 71 House Democrats voting for FIT21. But the Senate will be narrowly divided, with 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats, meaning both parties will need to be involved in any major initiative.

The role of the SEC

Also at the Blockchain Association’s Policy Summit on Tuesday, the two Republican commissioners of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – Mark Uyeda and Hester Peirce – spoke about the changes they expect at the agency in the 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 legislation on digital assets from Congress, “we can say that some of these things are simply outside of our jurisdiction.”

“We can certainly work closely with the CFTC,” she said. “We are ready to work on things as soon as we have the opportunity. … I think there are a lot of places we can help.”

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

“I’m not saying enforcement is going to go away,” she said. “The focus of enforcement is fraud.”

UPDATE (December 17, 2024, 7:22 p.m. UTC): Adds statement from Senator Scott on crypto czar meeting and comment from CFTC commissioner Summer Mersinger.