The US Congress has approved the first cryptocurrency bill. It regulates stablecoins

On July 17, for the first time in American history, the U.S. Congress approved a bill regulating the crypto market. It establishes the basic rules for regulating stablecoins - tokens tied to the dollar exchange rate. The document has been sent to the president for signature, but there is no doubt that Donald Trump will sign it, since he promoted the initiative, Bloomberg wrote.

The US Congress approved a bill called GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act) on Thursday. The document, promoted by Republicans and personally supported by President Donald Trump, introduces government oversight of dollar-linked tokens that can move freely between digital platforms, Bloomberg reports. The GENIUS Act establishes basic rules for regulating dollar-stablecoins, including the requirement to hold full collateral in U.S. currency or short-term government bonds under the control of federal or state regulators.

Proponents of such regulation say it could provide faster and cheaper settlements, as well as lend legitimacy to a market that is already worth $265 billion and is projected to reach $3.7 trillion by 2030, according to Citigroup's forecast.

The bill passed the U.S. Senate and now the U.S. House of Representatives last month with broad bipartisan support. Only the signature of the US president is missing for it to go into effect. Trump in previous days personally persuaded Republican lawmakers to vote in favor of the document, Bloomberg writes.

- Bitcoin, which rose to a record $123,000 in anticipation of cryptocurrency bills, was trading in a corridor of $117.5,000 to $119.9,000 on Thursday, down 0.5% by the evening.

- Shares of Circle Internet Group, which issues the second most capitalized steiblcoin USDC, rose by 0.8% on the main trading, and on the expanded - practically unchanged. When the GENIUS Act passed in the Senate in June, Circle's stock soared 34%.

- The securities of crypto exchange Coinbase Global rose by 3.2% during the day and by another 0.7% in the postmarket. Shares of trading platform Robinhood Markets strengthened by 2.1% and 0.5%, respectively.

- Quotes of Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, fell 1% during the day, following the cryptocurrency itself.

- Securities of the mining company MARA Holdings rose by 2.7%.

"This document gives the stablecoin industry the degree of legitimacy it has long sought," Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Bloomberg. - And the bonus is that the regulation, in my opinion, has gotten pretty lenient."

But there are those who don't see a significant advance, notes MarketWatch. "Cryptocurrency doesn't really have any serious momentum in Washington," Terry Haynes, founder of analyst firm Pangaea Policy, told the publication. He called the then-anticipated passage of the Stablecoin bill "the end of victories for the crypto industry for a long time - and a singular victory at that." "Investors interested in crypto will at most get a short-term rush of euphoria that will quickly subside once reality sets in," Haynes said.

Some Democratic senators criticized the bill because the new regulatory regime would not provide adequate protection for consumers and could bring problems in the event of a collapse of steiblcoin issuers. Digital tokens could pull some deposits away from banks if their customers start shifting en masse to steblecoin accounts, Bloomberg suggests.

The largest US banks are already feeling the looming pressure, the agency writes. In conference calls  after quarterly reports this week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser called the digital dollar a potential threat to banks' dominance in payment solutions, and signaled that they are preparing to retaliate. The bill allows banks and payment systems to issue their own stablecoins, and in recent weeks JPMorgan and Citigroup have expressed interest in creating such tokens in recent weeks.

Also on Thursday, the lower house voted to pass two more bills regulating the cryptocurrency market. The CLARITY Act defines the legal status of digital assets, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act prohibits the creation of a state digital currency. These documents will now have to be considered in the Senate.

But the CLARITY Act, according to TD Cowen analyst Jarett Seiberg, doesn't yet have the same level of bipartisan support in the upper chamber, making the timeline for passage uncertain. "Passage of this bill is symbolically important, but what really matters is what language the Senate will be able to agree on," the analyst said this week. He doesn't expect a final version of the document to emerge until late this year or early next year, writes Barron's. 

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor