The Stablecoins, despite their name, had a relatively volatile path to regulation in the United States
But Monday, May 19, after weeks of political back and forth, the Senate voted to advance the law on engineering, acronym to guide and establish national innovation for the American stable of the 2025 law, the country’s first stable legislation.
Voting 66-32 crossed the threshold of 60 voting necessary to invoke the Clot a request in procedure in the bill.
“Tonight’s vote is a welcome and long -awaited step towards the assertion of American leadership in digital assets. After doing politics, I am happy the senator Tim Scott (RS.C.) said in a press release.
The law would oblige that stablecoin issuers retain reservations in liquid and safe assets, adhere to the anti-white and hierarchical protocols and prioritize investors’ reimbursement in bankruptcy scenarios. These measures aim to strengthen consumer protection and financial stability on the rapid digital asset market.
While the engineering law is heading for the final adoption, the Senate is preparing for an open amendment process, allowing new debates and potential modifications to the bill, with the Durbin-Marshall credit card mandates which would be potentially included within the framework of the whole. The outcome of these discussions will have large-scale implications for the future of cryptocurrency and payments, regulations in the United States.
A vote on the regulatory bill supported by industry could occur this week.
“(T) The Senate will make history when we debate and adopt the Act on Engineering which will establish the very first pro-growth regulatory framework for the stables of payment,” said senator Bill Hagerty (R-Venn.) Friday, May 16.
Read: Cryptographic companies are struggling with banking risks, without the regulations
Political tensions and ethical concerns
Even with bipartite support, the genius law was not without controversy. Critics, especially among the Democrats in the Senate, have raised concerns about conflicts of potential interests involving President Donald Trump’s financial ties with the cryptocurrency industry, arguing that the legislation could inadvertently benefit from Trump’s personal financial interests.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MASS.) Was vocal in her opposition, warning that the bill could allow President Trump to benefit financially from his own cryptocurrency companies, in particular the Stablecoin USD launched by the company of his family, World Liberty Financial. While their concerns come to a head, the Democrats of the Senate recently presented the end Crypto Corruption Act, aimed at prohibiting federal officials and their families from investing or approving digital assets.
Democratic senator Mark Warner would have said that his party’s concerns should not hinder legislation, qualifying the “not perfect” bill but “much better than the status quo”.
“For the biggest banks, it’s probably quite good,” the former assistant secretary of the Trésor Amias Gerety told Pymnts in March. “I think that the biggest banks will succeed as stablecoin issuers.”
As Pymnts wrote last week, the debate on the bill comes in the middle of “generalized recognition in Washington that the stablecoins are too important to ignore”. In April, Stablecoin’s market capitalization reached a record level in the middle of strong performance between the cryptographic sectors.
“Even if Stablecoins are the favorite support for many criminal activities, the creation of a regulated environment where these companies can operate in conjunction with the police are probably a positive,” said Dan Boyle, partner of Boies Schiller Flexner, in Pymnts in April.
See also: Keep the stable stables is complicated: why CFOs must be careful
The amendment hides
Although the law on engineering is fundamentally a bill on stable and digital assets, it now offers a Trojan horse arrangement with seismic implications for the traditional payment industry: the inclusion of routing mandates for Durbin-Marshall credit cards.
Visa and MasterCard exchange costs are a significant source of income for banks, in particular major card issuers like JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Capital One.
The Durbin-Marshall proposal aims to reproduce what was done for debit card networks in the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which required several network options for debit transactions. Since then, costs for merchants have dropped and competition has increased slightly, although criticism argues that savings have not been transmitted to consumers.
By extending requirements similar to credit cards, Durbin-Marshall could erode the domination of the Duopoly of the Visa-Master card and open the door to emerging players-potentially including real-time payment networks, Blockchain-based systems or native fiscal rails such as Stripe or Square.
