In a new insight, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin walks through the House-passed Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), a bill intended to put the necessary congressional stamp on cryptocurrency (“crypto”) regulation and resolve regulatory authority disputes.

Key points:

• Regulation of crypto, digital assets, and related technologies has been hampered by disagreement over the character of crypto and a turf war between financial regulators.
• By assigning regulatory roles, FIT21 would provide frameworks within which consumer- and investor-supervised digital assets may be regulated.
• While there is much to be valued in the bill, there is likely to be daylight – though it is yet unclear how much – between Congress’ vision for a crypto framework and how such a framework would likely be adopted by the agencies in practice; as such, lawmakers would need to be especially vigilant over the logistics of FIT21’s implementation.

Read the analysis