US Lawmakers Pass FIT21 Crypto Bill That May Regulate SEC’s Involvement in Sector Oversight

Lawmakers from the US have come together to vote in favour of a crypto bill, called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21). In a rather historic moment, 279 out of 136 members of US' House of Representatives gave a green light to this bill on May 22. In the US, the House of Representatives is responsible for curating legislations and it, along with the US Senate, make the two chambers of Congress.

The US has finally joined the list of nations alongside India, Japan, and South Korea among others -- that are working on bringing the volatile and exploitable digital assets sector under regulatory oversight. The FIT21 bill aims to clarify which authorities have how much control over the crypto sector, so that the sector is secured but not at the cost of having its growth slowed down.

The FIT21 bill reportedly spells distinctive definitions for different categories of crypto assets, so that exchanges know which assets are being seen as securities. This clarification would prevent run-ins of crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase with the SEC, that affect the crypto sector's growth.

It further ensures that the monitoring of the digital assets industry is bifurcated between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As per reports, the CFTC could see more involvement in crypto oversight compared to the SEC, which has, multiple times, been blamed for attacking the crypto sector under the leadership of Gary Gensler.

Gensler has expressed an opposition to the bill reportedly saying, “The crypto industry's record of failures, frauds, and bankruptcies is not because we don't have rules or because the rules are unclear. It's because many players in the crypto industry don't play by the rules.”

Players and stakeholders from US' crypto industry however, are celebrating the passing of the FIT21 bill. Brain Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase along with others posted about the development on X with many calling this vote ‘historic' for the crypto industry.

The bill will now be moved to the Senate for approval, upon which it will be signed into a law.

In the backdrop of this development, the crypto price chart showed profits next to most cryptocurrencies on Thursday, May 23. As per CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin and Ether are trading at $69,485 (roughly Rs. 57.8 lakh) and $3,789 (roughly Rs. 3.15 lakh), respectively.