Senators Author Bipartisan Plan to Create Oversight Body For Emerging Financial Technologies

Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) are set to release draft legislation on digital assets, which will be open for a month-long public comment period before they formally introduce it in the Senate. As part of the bill, American Banker reports that Lummis said she “wants to create a new oversight body for emerging financial technologies that do not fall under the jurisdiction of existing regulators.”

“There will be sort of this oversight entity that will be created to look at new technologies that don’t neatly fit within a certain regulatory framework that already exists, so we can continue to incorporate innovation in this space into our well understood regulatory framework,” Lummis said.

The goal of allowing the public to review and comment on the bill before its official introduction is to make it as encompassing as possible.

“We want everyone to use next week and the month thereafter to get us additional feedback to make sure that we’ve covered all the points that people feel are necessary to create regulatory clarity,” Lummis said. “Among the most important components of that bill are definitions of the different kinds of assets that will help put them in different regulatory buckets and hopefully help clearly define not only who the regulator is, but what kind of reporting requirements might be necessary.”

One of the key questions that the bill hopes to address is what kind of regulatory framework needs to be established around stablecoins and cryptocurrencies, particularly to create a safe haven for investors. Lummis said that she and Gillibrand have identified ways that such stablecoins can be regulated.