The U.S. Senate Banking Committee voted in favor of advancing the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act to a full Senate vote Thursday, with the legislation receiving bipartisan support.
The bill passed through committee by a vote of 18-6, with five Senate Democrats joining Republicans to push the bill over the finish line with considerable breathing room.
Democrats who voted for the GENIUS Act’s passage include bill cosponsor Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), as well as Senate Banking Committee members Mark Warner (D-VA), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).
The bill’s sponsor, Bill Hagerty (R-TN), said he intends for the bill to receive a full vote on the Senate floor by the end of April.
“The Banking Committee’s strong bipartisan passage of the GENIUS Act out of committee brings us one step closer to providing stablecoin issuers with the choice between state and national charters and will secure our nation’s competitive edge in the rapidly evolving digital asset space,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), another cosponsor of the bill, said in a statement shared with Decrypt.
During Thursday’s meeting of the Senate Banking Committee, longtime crypto critic Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) attempted to add multiple new provisions to the GENIUS Act, which creates a legal framework for nonbank stablecoin issuers to participate in the U.S. economy.
Warren proposed amendments to the bill that would have blacklisted any stablecoin issuers whose tokens were found to have been used in connection with state enemies and illegal activity, including drug trafficking and the purchase of child pornography. Another would have expanded the provisions of the Act to apply to crypto exchanges and other third parties that interact with stablecoins.
All her amendments were voted down, mostly along party lines.
“Who are we trying to protect, the child pornographers and Iran and North Korea?” Warren said at one point, in apparent exasperation, after her third amendment was voted down.
“Nobody’s looking to shut this down, no one’s looking to stop innovation,” the progressive senator said at a later point during the meeting. “But we do want to try to make this a little cleaner than it is right now.”
The bill proceeded shortly after to a vote, which it passed handily.
A new version of the GENIUS Act was released earlier this week in anticipation of today’s markup. While it has been generally supported by industry leaders, some crypto users pushed back on a new provision that would require stablecoin issuers to have the ability to “seize, freeze, burn, or prevent the transfer” of tokens if obligated to comply with legal orders.
Edited by James Rubin
