WASHINGTON — The House Financial Services Committee quietly posted a draft of the bipartisan stablecoin bill that Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, chairman of the panel, and ranking member Rep. Maxine Waters of California have debated over for months.
Despite multiple high-profile events in the crypto space, including the failure of
The text of the draft was published on the House Financial Services Committee's page for a hearing on stablecoins to be hosted Wednesday. The hearing will include
McHenry previously called the stablecoin bill an
The bill would authorize the Federal Reserve to license nonbank stablecoin issuers and introduce a two-year moratorium for algorithmic stablecoins. A "payment stablecoin" would be considered as a digital asset "that is or is designed to be used as a means of payment or settlement," while a stablecoin issuer would be "obligated to convert, redeem, or repurchase for a fixed amount of monetary value." Stablecoins would also have to maintain "the reasonable expectation" that their value would remain relatively constant.
The bill would create a regulatory regime that would require stablecoin issuers to maintain reserves on a one-to-one basis. It would also allow issuers to use U.S. currency, Treasury bills with a maturity of 90 days or less, 7-day repurchase agreements backed by Treasury bills and central bank reserve deposits.
