Leadership of Blockchain Technology

Floor Speech

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Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1664, the Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2025, which passed under voice vote. This bill gives the Department of Commerce broad authority to pursue U.S. leadership of blockchain technology.

This is an unusual circumstance because I actually support the legislation and supported the legislation during the last administration because we had a Secretary of Commerce then who was one of the finest public servants that I have had the pleasure of working with.

Now, however, we have a Secretary of Commerce who is pushing to use crypto to the benefit of himself and his own family, specifically his son, who is trying to make deals overseas.

Our Secretary has strong ties to the stablecoin Tether. He spent 40 years as CEO and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, one of Tether's key investors. He is using his and his family's weight to pitch Tether to foreign governments across the Middle East, turning public policy into personal profit.

The United States Government must be a free and impartial referee. We should not be a bull or a bear on crypto. We should ensure market integrity, force amplification of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency, but that becomes impossible when the Secretary of Commerce is so conflicted as he is on this matter.

That is on top of the fact that the President himself has been selling off the Presidency with the $TRUMP meme coin. We cannot allow this administration to continue to grift off of blockchain.

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