As the House of Representatives considers a stablecoin bill, old-school financial giants share their changes
Jesse Hamilton | Edited by Nikhilesh De Updated Mar 11, 2025 19:42 UTC Published Mar 11, 2025 17:05 UTC
After years of crypto insiders persistently trying to get the attention of the US Congress, the latest stablecoin hearing featured a senior BNY executive and a Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyer who has spent his entire career representing Wall Street among the witnesses supporting digital assets.
As support for crypto legislation grows in this Congress, representatives of the traditional financial system are trying to influence the situation to support regulation of stablecoins. At a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, lawyer Randy Guynn argued that the safeguards put in place by the Stablecoin Transparency and Accountability for a More Efficient Ledger Economy Act, also known as the STABLE Act, should provide issuers of these digital tokens with the same protections as banks.
“If a permitted stablecoin issuer has a properly balanced reserve of liquid assets, a capital buffer, and no significant liabilities other than those related to the stablecoins as specified in the Stablecoin Act, its payment stablecoins should be as safe as insured bank deposits and central bank funds,” said Guynn, who has long been one of Wall Street’s most prominent banking compliance lawyers.
Across the witness table was Caroline Butler, global head of digital assets at BNY, which Congressman Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, called “the ultimate expression of traditional finance.” Butler said her bank already provides significant services to issuers like Circle (USDC), and that the sector needs clarity from the U.S. government.
“It is critical to the ecosystem that banks providing custody services can trust each other and be confident that customer assets are truly protected and in compliance with federal laws and regulations,” she told House lawmakers.
“We want to be able to participate in new and evolving options and mechanisms – stablecoins and blockchain technologies are just examples of this – so that we can continue to meet the changing needs of the market and our customers,” Butler added.
The sentiments of those in favor of stablecoin regulation echo what has often been discussed before, but the sources of this sentiment tend to come from more traditional sectors of finance. The confluence comes as the political power of the crypto industry — bolstered by tens of millions of dollars in aid given to congressional campaigns from crypto sources — has increased markedly in Washington, as seen in the week
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