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Floor Speech

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Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Hagerty- Gillibrand substitute amendment to the GENIUS Act, legislation to regulate the cryptocurrency assets known as stablecoins.

Over the past several years, top U.S. financial regulators--both Democrats and Republican administrations--have repeatedly called on Congress to do their job: Regulate this new industry; do your work; do the oversight; do the accountability; write legislation; and pass a law.

They repeatedly called on Congress to regulate stablecoins, recognizing their global role in the global economy. Both administrations have recognized that for the United States to remain the financial capital of the world, Congress needs to pass clear regulatory rules that protect consumers and foster innovation here at home.

I started working on this legislation 3 years ago with Cynthia Lummis. This is not a bill written quickly for any reason but to regulate an industry that needs rules of the road.

To date, Congress's failure to act has left the digital asset space as a Wild West, where American consumers are vulnerable to scams, and businesses are desperate for the regulatory clarity they need to compete with foreign countries, foreign entities that do business in our markets effectively.

Doing nothing and protecting the status quo is not only irresponsible, it is unacceptable. Unlike the United States, our global competitors have moved to regulate the space.

In 2023, the European Union passed comprehensive cryptocurrency regulation, and numerous meaningful provisions went into effect last year. China's central bank has been promoting the digital yuan, which threatened the U.S. dollar's role as the global reserve currency.

Global commerce will soon be conducted using stablecoins. It is imperative to keep the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency of the world and stablecoins to be pegged to the dollar, not the Chinese yuan.

There is reason for both consumers and small retailers to be supportive of this legislation. Stablecoins offer faster, more affordable ways to settle transactions that will benefit everyone.

Earlier this year, Senators Hagerty, Alsobrooks, Scott, Lummis, and I introduced the bipartisan GENIUS Act, which is the strongest effort to date to regulate and create a clear regulatory framework for the payment stablecoin industry.

It has a number of commonsense provisions relating to consumer protections, reserve requirements, illicit finance, national security, foreign issuers, separating of banking and commerce rules--just to name a few.

It had an excellent markup in the Senate Banking Committee, where Senators had many of their concerns addressed, bipartisan amendments were accepted. The result was a true bipartisan product that passed with strong bipartisan support, including votes from five Democrats.

Over time and through subsequent negotiations, this bill has only become stronger with several additional improvements to strengthen consumer protection, clarify disclosure rules for Members of Congress, and implement other changes that close loopholes, prevent money laundering, and establish stricter and more specific standards.

The latest version of this bill earned support from a bipartisan majority of both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee.

The strong bipartisan nature of this effort has been demonstrated by the fact that the bill has continued to pick up new support with each additional vote.

I am very grateful Senator Hagerty is here. Together, we had a very strong bipartisan working relationship. If you could see a document itemizing every change that has been made since the minute we introduced this bill, it is volumes long.

It is extraordinary how open this process was; how many Senators were able to give serious critical thinking to the bill to make it better to bring bipartisan support behind this effort.

I can't thank Senator Hagerty enough for his leadership, his patience, and his willingness to create a bipartisan regulatory framework for an industry that desperately needs it.

I have been in the Senate now since 2009. I have never seen a more generous bipartisan process than I saw on this legislation. I have never seen a more serious group of Senators get together to try to write legislation of first impression than I saw in this process.

I know the people who are averse to this bill have their own political view. I think it is extremely unhelpful that we have a President who is involved in this industry, and I would love to ban his activity.

But that does not diminish the excellent work in this legislation. It does not diminish the hard work the bipartisan group of Senators put into this to make a difference and to write a law that can protect consumers, that can protect our financial services industry, that can protect the strength of the dollar, and that can protect people who would like access to capital.

Thirty percent of Americans are unbanked or underbanked. Many of those Americans have found access to the capital markets and access to capital through cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

This stablecoin bill represents the first incident that we are trying to make access to capital a reality for more Americans, to have our safety and soundness rules, our know your customer rules, our illicit finance rules, our protections of a one-to-one dollar banking.

None of that exists today. Because of the work of this legislation, we actually have a regulatory framework that can protect consumers in the future.

I just want to thank Senator Scott and Senator Hagerty for their extremely honest and thoughtful approach in working on bipartisan legislation, which I am very proud of the effort we have made.

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