The Republican U.S. Senator, Cynthia Lummis, representing Wyoming, revealed at a recent crypto event in Washington D.C. that the U.S. is losing out on the crypto space. Dubbed “Crypto Queen,” Lummis disclosed that she bought her first Bitcoin in 2013 and wished she had bought more of the token.
Supporting Crypto Regulation
It is not for nothing that the Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis is called the crypto queen. Her resolve to ensure the implementation of a comprehensive crypto regulation was never in doubt and this has attracted the crypto community’s attention to her.
Lummis reportedly partnered with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the Democrat Congresswoman from New York, to introduce a bipartisan bill, “Responsible Financial Innovation Act,” which seeks to create a regulatory framework for the digital asset industry. However, the move was significantly affected by the crypto winter, the decline in prices of digital assets, and the FTX implosion of November 2022.
The FTX debacle and other bankruptcies have “chilling effects” on Congress’s drive to draft additional policy for the industry, revealed Lummis. However, the senator is confident they will pick up from where they left off in the ongoing Congressional session.
In another move with Sen. Gillibrand, Lummis intends to introduce an improved bill early next month, which the senator noted is “lighter and meatier” than the previous one. The new one is more action-oriented, whereas the previous bill proposes some surveys.
On whether the newly proposed bill would work, Lummis stressed that what attracted her to Crypto was its innovativeness and that the industry needs a regulatory framework as soon as possible. She noted that she is a debt and deficit enthusiast, and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the country’s growing debt profile has her looking for a way to resolve the issue.
According to her, Bitcoin offered the best solution to curtail the United States’ growing debt hence her first asset purchase in 2013.
Status Of The Bipartisan Crypto Legislation
According to Senator Lummis, she and Sen. Gillibrand will reintroduce the bipartisan bill next month. She added that they are currently reviewing some of the definitions of terms associated with digital assets that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is not “crazy about.”
Lummis disclosed that they have been working closely with the SEC to see if they could get something legally concrete enough to help determine what asset is a commodity or security. She stressed that they are not leaving this to the regulator alone to determine the asset classifications.
Furthermore, Lummis points out that Europe is more advanced than the United States regarding crypto regulations. She noted that despite president Joe Biden’s administration having a working group to explore the central bank digital currency (CBDC), she and Gillibrand agreed that a CBDC should not be direct to retail.
She explained that stablecoins are more useful in retail transactions than CBDCs. Moreover, she hopes other lawmakers will agree to work on the stablecoin bill proposed during the previous Congress.
