Republican Rep. Mike Flood, a soft-spoken second-term lawmaker from Nebraska, might seem like an unlikely candidate to pull the strings when it comes to cryptocurrency policy in Congress. Nonetheless, he played central casting in May when his colleagues took historic action by voting for the first to pass two measures that would lay out rules for the industry.
I want to make sure that we preserve our dual-banking system so that you can have federally chartered banks or federally chartered institutions issuing stablecoins and custodying digital assets — but also state based charters. I think one of the things that happened with this process in Nebraska is that our banks understood that we were going to give them powers that some of their customers wanted. And I think it really surprises a lot of bankers — especially in rural areas — how many people are invested in digital assets. They recognize that this asset class is something they haven’t had any exposure to, and they want to be full service.
And of course, Warren is a privacy advocate. He is a ‘Get the government out of my backyard’ advocate. He embraces DeFi and he understands the issues and being on the Digital Assets Subcommittee, it’s fun to sit in there with those two book ends and create policy. A lot of members are going on CODELs to countries like Singapore and the UAE and the European Union and they're hearing about digital asset frameworks that are being set up there, and they're coming back to Congress, saying, “Why are we — the world's superpower when it comes to financial services — not even in the game?”
CT: What do you think the next Congress — which may be working with President Trump again — will be focusing on in this space?Well, success would be passing FIT21 and the stablecoins bill. That would be the start. I think in the next Congress, we have to really understand artificial intelligence and play in that space. We have to worry about cybersecurity.