The Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, has announced a series of joint hearings in May that will focus on the market structure of digital assets in the United States.

Congressman McHenry, Glenn Thompson, Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, French Hill, Chairman of the Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Inclusion Subcommittee, and Dusty Johnson, Chairman of the Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development Subcommittee, announced the move on April 27.

“Our Committees are embarking on an unprecedented collaborative effort to develop and enact clear rules of the road for the digital asset ecosystem.” “We must strike the right balance between protecting consumers and stifling responsible innovation,” the joint statement says.

McHenry added more context to the upcoming hearings while speaking on a panel with crypto-friendly Senator Cynthia Lummis at the 2023 Consensus event on April 28: “We’re going to hold joint hearings when we return in May.” This will be the first time we have had a holistic view for a house committee hearing on the regulation, our market structure around digital assets, and the overall picture.”

“What we plan to do over the next two months is report out a bill that deals with the capital raising piece for digital assets, all the way through to how a product can go from a securities regime to a commodities regime, while also preserving our rights around products that are neither neatly [put] into a securities regime nor a commodities regime,” he added.

McHenry also stated that the purpose of the hearings is to create a bill that provides regulatory clarity to the crypto sector, which complements the work being done on the bipartisan bill led by Lummis and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

The Responsible Financial Innovation Act, also known as the Lummis-Gillibrand bill, was introduced in the United States Senate in June 2022 and addresses, among other things, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jurisdiction, stablecoin regulation, and crypto taxation.

The bill’s passage has been delayed, most likely due to its complexity for non-crypto-versed Senators. Lummis and Gillibrand have since revised the bill, and the next draft is expected to be released soon.

“This is the work that Senator Lumms and Senator Gillibrand put in on the Senate side, but this is going to be our attempt in the House [of Congress],” he said. Lummis commented on the revised bill, implying that this iteration will likely place a greater emphasis on “national security interests” such as cyber security. 

“Some of the people I speak with who are still skeptical of digital assets are concerned that our bill does not adequately address cybercrime.” As a result, I believe our bill will include a stronger cybercrime component. “I believe you’ll see some provisions requiring certain registration […] so that companies are properly regulated and vetted,” she predicted.