Crypto bills struggle in Congress for second day

The future of a trio of crypto regulation bills was thrown into question Wednesday after a second day of opposition from conservative House Republicans held up the legislation for 10 hours before it finally moved forward.

Fresh opposition also emerged over the course of the day from moderate Republicans who objected to last-minute changes intended to appease an original group of hardline conservative holdouts whose ‘no’ votes had tanked the bills on Tuesday

Late Wednesday night, a group of ‘no’ votes flipped to yesses, and the chamber finally approved the rules of debate for the crypto bills and an adjacent Pentagon appropriations package.

Wednesday’s marathon vote set the record for the longest open vote in modern House history, a record that had had been set earlier in the month.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R.-La., can lose only a handful of Republicans on any measure, and still pass the legislation in a party-line vote.

Regardless of Wednesday’s late-night passage, the two-day stalemate over crypto regulation has fueled doubts over whether the House Republican conference can align its members’ differing views on crypto regulation enough to pass final versions of the bills that will eventually be signed into law.

For the crypto industry — which gave tens of millions of dollars to House members during the last campaign cycle — the struggle to move the bills was a sharp letdown that threatened to dash hopes of getting a crypto regulation framework passed during what had been billed as “Crypto Week.” 

Wednesday’s new stumbles also raised questions about the scope of President Donald Trump’s influence over members of the party he leads.

This second attempt to approve the rules came after 11th-hour negotiations and Trump’s intervention on Tuesday evening appeared to bring one group of holdouts on board. 

Trump met in the Oval Office late Tuesday evening with about a dozen conservative Republicans.

Afterward, he said they had “all agreed to vote” in favor of the rule, according to a late-night Truth Social post.

But new opposition Wednesday came from lawmakers on key committees who had authored the legislation — not just the conservative hardliners.

Members of the Committee on Financial Services, for instance, opposed some of the last-minute tweaks made by leadership to merge two of the bills, according to Politico. 

The three bills in question include one, the GENIUS Act, which passed the Senate in June, and two others that are moving through the House first: The CLARITY Act and a bill that would bar the Federal Reserve from establishing a central bank digital currency.