Skip to main content

US lawmaker hints at calling for Republican votes in 2022 midterms over crypto policies

Representative Patrick McHenry said regulatory clarity for digital assets would be one of his "top priorities" if he became the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry may have used his virtual appearance at a cryptocurrency conference as a soapbox for calling for votes in the 2022 United States midterm elections.

In a prerecorded message for the attendees of the Converge22 conference in San Francisco on Sept. 29, McHenry suggested that the goal of a “clear regulatory framework” for digital assets could drive U.S. lawmakers to develop legislation. The Republican lawmaker used terms including “bipartisan consensus” and support from both major political parties over certain regulatory frameworks related to digital assets and stablecoins before seemingly encouraging crypto users to vote red in the next election.

“To ensure that these technologies flourish here in the United States, we need to provide regulatory clarity to the digital asset ecosystem,” said McHenry. “This will be one of my top priorities if I become chair of the House Financial Services Committee next Congress.”

Representative Patrick McHenry addressing Converge22 attendees via recorded message

The current chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative Maxine Waters, was approved by the Democratic Caucus in 2018 to serve in the committee’s leadership after the party won back control of the House of Representatives. Under House rules, the majority party recommends a chair, while the minority party recommends a ranking member. 

McHenry seemed to suggest that by voting with the goal of having Republicans take control of the House, he would prioritize policies for crypto users. At the time of publication, 221 representatives in the House caucus with the Democrats, while Republicans hold 212 seats. The slim majority in both the House and Senate has many experts suggesting that Republicans have a chance to flip both chambers of Congress in the November 2022 Midterms i.

Related: Coinbase to educate users on policies held by local politicians with new app integration

Under U.S. Federal Election Commission rules, candidates, campaigns and political action committees generally need to add a disclaimer to any advertisement promoting the election of one candidate or the defeat of another unless it is considered “of minimal value.” Though McHenry’s speech largely focused on the draft bill and suggested stablecoins were a “bipartisan entry point for Congress to bring clear rules to the digital asset ecosystem,” mixing crypto and politics is nothing new for the space.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong made waves in September 2020 following a blog post in which he described the crypto exchange as “laser focused on achieving its mission” as part of a company that largely abstained from engaging in U.S. politics. The crypto exchange launched a voter registration portal in August as part of a crypto policy education initiative.



from https://ift.tt/VsBnlCA
https://ift.tt/MYZ51lt

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DeFi isn’t dead, it just needs to fix these 3 critical problems

It’s been a rough year for DeFi, and it may not get any better until projects focus more on security, regulation and usability. The persistent challenges  decentralized finance  face have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do in order to have another revival.  Improved usability To date, the promise of open and uncensored access to a global decentralized financial system has been largely hampered by the complicated interface, confusing multi-step staking processes and lack of clarity surrounding the yields on various tokens. What do you thi...

ENS DAO delegates offer perspective on DAO governance and decentralized identity

AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community.  Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers. Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for  resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. Alpha...

National Futures Association adds rules for members handling digital assets

The CFTC-linked self-regulatory organization (SRO) has disclosure rules for members engaging in activities with BTC and ETH; now, standards of conduct are being added. The National Futures Association (NFA), the United States self-regulatory organization for derivatives markets, has issued a new compliance rule addressing members’ conduct. The new rule complements requirements issued in 2018. The NFA has “well over 100” members that engage in activities with digital asset commodities, but no way to address fraud or misconduct committed by those members, the organization explained to secretary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Christopher Kirkpatrick in a Feb. 28 letter as it submitted the proposed new rule for approval. The new rule is modelled on the NFA’s antifraud rules for exchange traded futures and swaps transaction and retail foreign exchange. The NFA is the only registered self-regulatory organization that has delegated authority from the CFTC, giving it a...