Bitwise Chief Compliance Officer Predicts Stablecoin Legislation to Arrive This Year – Will This Be Beneficial for the Crypto Industry?

cryptonews.com:

Katherine Dowling, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at the crypto index fund provider Bitwise Asset Management, argued that US Congress would move to regulate stablecoins this year - as the first step towards the crypto industry regulation. 

California Republican Kevin McCarthy was chosen to serve as the new House of Representatives speaker in early January in an election that had unfolded for several days. Also, the 118th United States Congress, which is the current meeting of the legislative branch of the federal government, composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives, convened on January 3, 2023. A shift in US politics is bound to reflect on the regulation of the crypto industry and its different sectors. 

Answering a question about how soon there would be some action on stablecoin regulation, Dowling said to CoinDesk TV that,

"I think we are going to see renewed interest in stablecoin legislation with the new Congress."

2022 was a year of many different bills dropping and politicians looking for definitions and regulations of the crypto space, "so we had some great momentum moving into the end of the year," she said. "And then we had the FTXissue."

There is no reason to believe that the infamous collapse of the FTX exchange will affect the regulations in the sense that they'll be harsher, but it did provide a real-world example of what can happen when there is no regulation, Dowling said. In addition to that, FTX was an offshore company, so having companies onshore and subject to clear regulation would make all the difference, she argued. 

"And now, there's a renewed interest to make stablecoin the first piece of the legislative puzzle," Dowling said.

First will be regulation on stablecoins, and then