Bipartisan bill for blockchain competitiveness passes US House

The Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2023 gives the Commerce Department a role in advancing blockchain technology.

As the crypto community awaits the United States House of Representatives vote on the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century (FIT21) Act, it passed another, more modest, pro-crypto bill: the Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2023, which was approved by a margin of 334 to 79. 

The bipartisan bill directs the secretary of commerce—currently Gina Raimondo—“to take actions necessary and appropriate to promote the competitiveness of the United States [in] blockchain technology or other distributed ledger technology.”

The bill establishes the secretary as the principal presidential adviser on blockchain and gives the secretary several responsibilities that include policy development, research and promotion of the technology. It also mandates the formation of an advisory committee for the secretary to be made up of governmental, industry, academic and cultural representatives and to present an annual report to Congress.

Related: US House to vote on FIT21 bill before holiday weekend

Representatives Lisa Blunt Rochester and Larry Bucshon introduced the bill, neither of whom has a previous record on blockchain or crypto issues. On Dec. 5, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously approved it. The Chamber of Digital Commerce and Blockchain Association endorsed it.

Among the bill’s opponents were crypto skeptics Sean Casten, Bill Foster and Brad Sherman and pro-crypto Senator Cynthia Lummis’s lower house colleague Harriet Hageman. Casten was the lead sponsor, along with Sherman, Foster and others, of the Blockchain Integrity Act, which was introduced into the House on May 7. That bill would ban the use of crypto mixing services for two years while the Treasury Department prepared an assessment of them. That bill has yet to come up for a vote.

The House passed the bill on May 15. Two blockchain-adjacent bills — the Consumer Safety Technology Act and the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act — were passed the same day. All those bills will now go for consideration in the Senate.

There are as many as 50 bills affecting cryptocurrency currently in the U.S. Congress at various stages of consideration.