Senate Advances Stablecoin Bill, Clearing the Way for Final Passage

The U.S. Senate voted to move ahead on stablecoin legislation Monday night, removing a procedural barrier to ultimately passing the bill out of the body entirely.

Senators easily cleared the 60-vote threshold for the vote, which is intended to just move the legislation to a period of further debate before a final vote series to pass it out of the Senate. The House of Representatives is working its way through its own version of stablecoin legislation, which is intended to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins and their issuers in the U.S.

The Senate previously failed to reach the 60-vote threshold to advance the bill during a vote on May 8, after Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about consumer protection and national security provisions. That vote had failed on a bipartisan basis, after Republicans Josh Hawley and Rand Paul also voted against cloture.

Despite that earlier setback, industry participants expected easy passage on Monday after lawmakers spent much of the last week negotiating changes in language, though many of these changes seemed marginal.

One individual following the negotiations told CoinDesk that “there’s enough” in the newest version of the bill to address some of Democrats’ concerns earlier on Monday, though the lawmakers negotiating language could have added more hefty consumer protection provisions.

After that latest overhaul, several Democratic lawmakers who previously voted against cloture, including Senators Ruben Gallego and Mark Warner, announced they would vote in favor of cloture ahead of the vote.