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The Senate is moving forward with a procedural vote on a key cryptocurrency bill Thursday afternoon, even as bipartisan negotiations over compromise legislation stretched late into Wednesday, a GOP aide said.
Crypto-friendly Republican and Democratic lawmakers huddled for nearly six hours total Wednesday as they sought to reach a consensus on Democrat-sought changes to stablecoin legislation, including language targeted at preventing corruption. But they emerged from their second meeting of the day with no signs of a deal.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen yet,” sponsor Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said of Thursday’s procedural vote as she left the US Capitol Wednesday evening. “That’s all at the leadership level.”
The timeline gives Democrats, some of whom had asked to push the vote to next week, mere hours to socialize revised text with others in their caucus who had raised concerns. Staff worked into the night to draft changes.
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Nine pro-crypto Democrats released a statement Saturday saying that they would not support the crypto bill until Republicans agreed to make changes related to national security and consumer protections. Though their issues centered in large part on not being sufficiently consulted between the committee vote and the floor — one person described their pushback as “calling a foot fault” — their announcement came in the wake of a tense caucus meeting last week where senators discussed the Trump family’s crypto ventures.
Four of the lawmakers — Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Mark Warner of Virginia — had already voted for the measure in committee. Gallego said on a podcast Wednesday that Republicans “put Democrats in a bad position” by lining up this week’s vote
“We’re going to keep talking as long as it takes to get there; we’re not there,” Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., another one of the bill’s sponsors, told Semafor ahead of the senators’ second meeting Wednesday.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., signed Saturday’s statement but did not attend Wednesday’s meetings. He told Semafor Wednesday evening that he has yet to see any text of negotiated changes — not even a summary — but that he expected to know more when he woke up on Thursday.
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The bill would create rules for stablecoins, a type of digital asset pegged to others like the dollar, in a big win for the crypto industry. Its passage was supposed to be crypto firms’ easy win this Congress as they also seek to enact a far more complex overhaul of how federal agencies oversee the industry.
Hanging over this week’s debate is crypto’s growing influence over US elections. After spending big last year to elect its allies to Congress, the industry was quick to turn its attention to the upcoming midterms. A trio of crypto-backed super PACs has already amassed at least $116 million from firms like Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz and Ripple — and its backers are watching Thursday’s vote closely.
“With $116 million out there, there is a pretty big carrot for them to put their BS aside at some point,” one crypto industry insider, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said of the Democratic senators.