House Democratic leaders will not whip against the landmark cryptocurrency bills that will be on the floor later this week despite opposition from the party’s top member on the Financial Services Committee.
The decision highlights an ongoing split on the left over the risks and rewards of digital assets.
A notice sent to Democrats on Monday by Whip Katherine Clark’s office, which was obtained by POLITICO, sharply criticized both a crypto market structure bill and a Senate stablecoin measure that the lower chamber is slated to vote on, but did not tell members how to vote.
The industry-backed bills are poised to split Democrats on the House floor. Financial Services ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has sought to rally opposition to the bills, saying they pose a risk to the financial system and would enable corruption by President Donald Trump, whose family runs several crypto ventures.
But other Democrats are on board with the GOP-led pro-crypto push, and Republicans are scrambling to win as much bipartisan support as they can before floor votes on Wednesday and Thursday.
The market structure bill, led by Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.), “has a number of oversights and omissions that, when coupled with the actions of the Executive Branch, raise significant and long-term issues that may undermine the possibilities of new technologies,” Clark’s whip notice said. It also noted that Waters “strongly opposes this bill as written.”
Hill’s bill, which is expected to be on the floor Wednesday, seeks to divvy up oversight of digital assets between securities and commodities regulators and is the centerpiece of the GOP’s crypto policy agenda. It faces an uncertain future in the Senate, despite Banking Chair Tim Scott’s pledge to advance a crypto market structure bill in September.
Democratic leaders also did not whip against an earlier GOP-led crypto market structure bill that got 71 Democratic votes on the House floor last year.
The House will vote Thursday on bipartisan Senate legislation that would create new, light-touch rules for so-called stablecoins, which are pegged to the value of the dollar. That bill is poised to become the first major crypto law enacted by Congress after House Republicans opted to accept the Senate’s approach.
“While this bill moves in the direction of greater regulation, there are no community reinvestment requirements, no third-party vendor federal oversight, and weak federal oversight of stablecoin issuers licensed by states or overseas — unlike regulations governing the banking industry,” the whip notice said of the stablecoin bill. “In addition, this bill still narrowly permits private commercial companies (e.g., Elon Musk’s X) to issue stablecoins, jeopardizing a decades-old separation of banking and commerce created to prevent consolidations of economic and political power.”
Waters, who has dubbed this “anti-crypto corruption week,” is focusing heavily on concerns about Trump’s crypto business entanglements in her own whipping efforts. Her office hosted a Democratic staff briefing Monday afternoon featuring a roundtable of consumer advocates.
Clark’s whip notice also did not provide a vote recommendation for a third crypto measure the House is taking up this week that would ban a central bank digital currency in the U.S., though the vote on that bill is expected to be more partisan.
