White House aims for July 4 deadline to pass landmark crypto regulation bill

The White House’s top crypto adviser, Patrick Witt, set a target date for July 4 to pass broad crypto legislation into law as the window to act continues to dwindle. 

Speaking Wednesday at the Consensus conference in Miami, the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets said he believed the Senate could advance the legislation in June, leaving enough time for the House to also pass its version. The House passed its version last year, but it would need to be reconciled with what the Senate comes out with. 

“We’re targeting July 4,” Witt said. “I think that would be a tremendous birthday present for America, celebrating our 250th.”

Over the past year, the Senate has been trying to advance a bill that seeks to regulate the crypto industry at the federal level for the first time, in part through divvying up jurisdiction between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The main sticking point in passing the bill in the Senate Banking Committee has been around the treatment of stablecoin rewards, which has seemingly been squared away after compromise language was released last week, though bank trade groups have argued that it “falls short.” 

The Senate Banking Committee could decide to hold a hearing to amend and vote on the bill as early as next week. However, another looming issue has come to the forefront — ethics. Many Senate Democrats have raised concerns over President Donald Trump and his family’s crypto connections, which Bloomberg has estimated have brought in about $1.4 billion.

Both Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, launched memecoins ahead of the inauguration, and his family has led the DeFi and stablecoin project World Liberty Financial.

At Consensus in Miami, one of the crypto bill’s most prominent voices, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said that there would be no support for the bill without an ethics provision. 

On Wednesday, Witt said discussions with Democrats have been good recently, adding that they have been consistent in saying that language cannot target “anyone’s family, any one particular politician.”

“I think we’re getting a lot closer to a compromise on that, and I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to close that out as well,” Witt said. 

When pressed about language, including the president, Witt said the rules would apply to the president and the new intern working on Capitol Hill. 

“I think it’s not really so much the President, this President, the Office of the President,” Witt said. “It is if you’re applying rules that you’re only trying to single out one particular office holder or one particular individual, that is not something we are going to entertain.”