Today, the United States Congress held a hearing on crypto assets, hearing testimony from some of the industry’s most prominent leaders.
The House Committee on Financial Services of the United States Congress conducted the hearing. Maxine Waters, Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, sponsored a hearing on “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance.”
Executives from key cryptocurrency businesses spoke at the congressional session, which was live-streamed on YouTube. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks, Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon were among those who testified.
Stablecoins, or tokens with a price fixed to established currencies such as the US dollar, were a hot subject of discussion.
Several CEOs are directly involved with the subject: Circle and Coinbase are responsible for the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC), while Paxos is accountable for its own Paxos dollar (USDP).
Allaire and Brooks Stress Competition Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that stablecoins may actually benefit the US dollar’s worldwide supremacy.
Allaire suggested that independent US stablecoins would continue to dominate the crypto market even if competitors such as China’s central bank-issued digital yuan emerge.
While dollar stablecoins have processed “trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions,” Allaire noted that China’s digital yuan has processed “just $10 billion’s worth of transactions so far.”
He said that the US cryptocurrency sector wants the dollar to play a key and strategic role, and as such, policymakers should make backing US stablecoins a “national security priority.”
Brian Brooks, the CEO of Bitfury and a former OCC chairman, concurred with Allaire throughout his testimony. Brooks said that, during a time of growing inflation, stablecoins may assist the US dollar in becoming utility-driven and “not merely a post-1945 monetary system.”
Brooks advocated for US stablecoins, stating that their online character would let the dollar to compete on “benefits, not just history.”
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