A U.S. House committee could pass down proposed rules regulating stablecoins as soon as next week, including regulations on whether commercial companies could issue the coins.
The current draft of the bill would make it so stablecoin issuers would have to keep 100% reserves, and it would stop them from lending the coins to customers, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (July 20). Under the legislation, their names would also change to “payment stablecoins.”
Both bank and nonbank coin issuers would be operating under the same legislation. The report also noted that the Federal Reserve would license any nonbank stablecoin issuers, and would be responsible for looking after the financial health of those companies.
In addition, the report said there would be new rules on what assets can back stablecoins, and commercial companies like Walmart would not be allowed to issue the coins.
House Financial Services Committee leaders will be looking to advance the bipartisan bill by July 27. The bill is helmed by Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C.
Stablecoins are increasingly a focus of the policymakers, especially as the crypto markets have been roiled by various crises in the past few months. A recent PYMNTS report noted that a member of the House Financial Services Committee has said lawmakers might use this bill to overrule regulators who want the stablecoins to only be governed by banks.
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Read more: Lawmaker: Stablecoin Bill Could Bypass Regulators
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who is on the committee but not working on the bill, previously said there were likely to be options for “both banks and non-banks.”
PYMNTS wrote at the time that this might go against the recommendations of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which recommended that tokens should only be issued by “insured depository institutions” which have to work with the right kind of supervision and regulation.
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