Sponsors (22)
This bill aims to create a comprehensive federal framework that promotes clearer classifications, custody protections, and pathways for legitimate digital‑asset activity to expand market participation and safety, but it does so by imposing substantial compliance costs, carving out jurisdictional limits that risk oversight gaps, and creating tradeoffs that could reduce some investor protections and push activities offshore.
Developers, exchanges, brokers, dealers, and other market participants gain a clearer, time‑bound federal legal framework (definitions, jurisdictions, certification pathways, and registration rules) that reduces classification uncertainty and helps firms plan compliance and market entry.
Customers and investors get stronger safety and oversight because platforms and intermediaries must implement custody segregation, qualified-custodian rules, AML/CFT programs, anti‑fraud obligations, recordkeeping, and disclosures that make assets and risks more transparent and harder to misappropriate.
Issuers and token projects can access a voluntary 'maturity' or certification pathway and specified exemptions allowing certain blockchain-based tokens and secondary distributions to be treated as non‑securities if they meet criteria, lowering some compliance barriers and facilitating capital formation for qualifying projects.
Registered firms, exchanges, issuers, custodians, and stablecoin issuers will face substantial new compliance costs (registration, AML/CFT, attestations, reporting, custody standards, capital/fees and audits) that are likely to raise operating costs and could be passed to customers or squeeze smaller providers.
The bill creates carve‑outs, narrow jurisdictional limits, interstate preemption, and complex dual‑registration/exemption rules that could produce regulatory gaps, fragmented oversight (especially for DeFi and peer‑to‑peer activity), and litigation over which regulator applies.
Federal preemption and narrow federal safe‑harbors may reduce state enforcement tools and consumer protections, leaving some consumer harms harder for states to address and potentially weakening local remedies.
Based on analysis of 20 sections of legislative text.
Sets detailed legal definitions for blockchains and digital assets, assigns many spot-market rules to the CFTC, creates SEC "mature blockchain" certification, narrows securities coverage for certain tokens, and bans a retail Fed CBDC.
Introduced May 29, 2025 by French Hill · Last progress May 14, 2026
Creates a new federal regulatory framework for blockchains, digital commodities, and certain tokens by adding technical definitions, assigning regulatory roles between the SEC and CFTC, and requiring registration and conduct rules for digital-commodity trading platforms, brokers, and dealers. It also creates a voluntary SEC certification for “mature” blockchain systems, narrows securities-law coverage for some token sales, extends anti‑fraud rules to certain digital-commodity transactions, protects some non‑controlling developers from money-transmitter rules, and bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC).