US Senators prepare for a new vote on the highly anticipated stablecoin bill that recently failed to pass cloture. After facing backlash and support withdrawal from Senate Democrats, the bill has undergone new bipartisan amendments to advance the legislation in the upcoming weeks.
A week after failing to pass the US Senate vote, Senator John Thune has filed cloture on the amended Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act following bipartisan efforts to revive the legislation.
The bill, sponsored by Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, failed to pass the cloture motion on May 8 after several lawmakers, including two Republican senators, withdrew their support ahead of the vote.
The lawmakers suggested that the draft omitted essential AML and national security safeguards and had ambiguous regulations that could expose crypto markets to exploitation, which led to its failure.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Hagerty, recently told Bloomberg that staff from the two parties had continued to work on the GENIUS Act, hoping that Senate Democrats would agree to pass the bill before the Memorial Day holiday, on May 26.
The most recent bipartisan amended version of the stablecoin legislation reportedly includes new language regarding consumer protection, ethics, limitations on Big Tech issuers, among other provisions.
According to a draft page shared by Terret, the bill now prohibits non-financial publicly traded companies, like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, from issuing a stablecoin unless they meet strict criteria related to financial risks, consumer data, and fair business practices, to maintain “the separation between banking and commerce.”
Meanwhile, the bipartisan amendments also strengthen the Treasury Department’s enforcement capabilities, securing the agency’s “ability to suspend an issuer’s registration after both reckless and willful violations.”
The Democrats’ Thursday analysis affirms that the “current draft paves the way for more Trump crypto corruption,” expanding a “giant national security loophole for Tether,” and still permitting Big Tech companies to issue a stablecoin while failing to address several other “fundamental flaws.”
