Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday plans to lay out her own “principles” for legislation creating regulatory rules of the road for the digital assets market.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and a vocal critic of the crypto industry, is offering up her framework in contrast to the principles put forward by her Republican colleagues late last month as a precursor to a crypto market structure bill.
“I’m concerned that what my Republican colleagues are aiming for is another industry handout that gives the crypto lobby everything on its wish list: The blessing of the government’s approval, combined with crypto rules that are weaker than the rules every other financial actor must follow,” she will say in opening remarks at a Wednesday hearing.
Warren argues new crypto rules shouldn’t “open a back door to destroy” longtime securities laws or allow turmoil in the crypto market to spill over into the traditional financial system.
She also underscores that traditional protections and anti-money laundering rules should apply to the industry and calls for restrictions that “shut down the president’s crypto corruption.”
President Trump and his family’s involvement in the crypto space, from stablecoins to meme coins to bitcoin mining, has been a growing concern for Democrats as Congress considers several pieces of crypto legislation.
“If we’re going to provide rules of the road for crypto, we need to shut down this superhighway for presidential corruption at the same time,” Warren plans to say. “We need crypto legislation that will strengthen our financial system, not make it worse.”
Warren’s principles stand in contrast to those unveiled by Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sens. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) in late June, which had a heavy focus on innovation.
The Republican senators’ principles for crypto market structure called for modernizing regulation to foster innovation and ensuring illicit finance measures are “targeted and pro-innovation.” They also suggested federal financial regulators should “welcome innovation.”
The competing views on legislation come as the Senate prepares to put forward its own crypto market structure bill after passing the GENIUS Act last month. The GENIUS Act, which the House is set to take up next week, seeks to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins.
Market structure legislation deals with the broader crypto market, aiming to divvy up oversight of the industry between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Scott and Lummis said late last month that they are now aiming to pass a market structure bill by the end of September, pushing back an earlier August deadline.
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