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Key points to remember
- The crypto industry is pressuring the Senate to accept the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey crypto amendment to the infrastructure bill.
- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has reportedly lobbied senators against the amendment, pushing for the stricter provision backed by the White House.
- The final vote on the amendment is scheduled for Saturday.
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Janet Yellen has reportedly lobbied against the amendment to the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey Infrastructure Bill, possibly in an attempt to weaken the cryptocurrency industry.
Yellen presses Senate against bill amendment
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reportedly used her influence to urge senators not to accept the crypto-friendly amendment to the infrastructure bill.
Senators in Congress are currently deciding between two amendments submitted to the bipartisan infrastructure bill, one of which is pro-crypto, and one that could threaten the future of the industry.
Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis and Pat Toomey this week introduced a $ 1 trillion bill amendment, suggesting a definition of “broker” that would exclude minors, validators, protocol developers and wallet creators. On Thursday, Senators Rob Portman and Mark Warner proposed a rival amendment that excludes only Proof-of-Work minors from the bill’s provision defining brokers. The crypto industry is concerned that the definition leaves room for DeFi developers and proof of stake validators to be labeled as brokers, meaning they would have to follow strict tax reporting rules.
According to two anonymous sources cited in the Washington Post, Yellen lobbied lawmakers against supporting the competing crypto-friendly project proposed by Wyden, Lummis and Toomey on Wednesday. Their project gave ground to intense lobbying from the crypto industry, suggesting a more favorable definition of “broker” that would exclude miners, validators, protocol developers and wallet creators.
Portman, who is widely believed to be the author of the original crypto provision included in the bill, has already gained official White House support. Yellen’s alleged support for the amendment would also align with some of the views she previously had on the cryptocurrency space. Last month, she urged regulators to “act quickly” in response to the growth of stablecoins.
Jake Chervinsky, general counsel at Compound Finance, posted a storm of tweets in which he wrote that “The word to DC is that this was all. [the] Treasure idea. They don’t like what we are building and their solution is to get jurisdiction over non-depository actors. They tried this through the rule proposed by FinCEN last year and failed. Now they are trying again.
Yellen also backed FinCEN’s controversial digital wallet proposal earlier this year; he was frozen when Biden entered the White House. An attempt to convince the Senate to vote on the bill’s least crypto-friendly amendment could be a sign that Yellen is aiming to weaken the crypto industry.
1 / A little explanation of what happened with the infrastructure bill last night:
We were on track to pass the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment to solve the worst problems in the bill, then Senators @RobPortman & @MarkWarner came out of nowhere to detonate it.
Now the vote is tomorrow
– Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) August 6, 2021
Senators had hoped to pass the bipartisan bill Thursday night. However, the debate over the crypto-related amendments will likely extend through the weekend, with the final vote due on Saturday.
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