French Hill wants a crypto statute because a new administration could undo SEC and CFTC rules

Hill's objection is about who can undo a rule. He argued that regulatory policy is exposed to whoever controls the executive branch, and that a new administration can bring new rules for the same industry ^[10]. "In my judgement, these regulatory policies fall short of what we have to do, which is have a legislative solution," he said ^[2].

Little of what a firm would build compliance around is final. Of the four agency actions Decrypt listed, one is in force ^[20]: the SEC's innovation exemption for tokenized stocks ^[12]. The SEC's rules for how investment advisers and funds custody crypto are still proposals ^[12]. The CFTC has sent its crypto-markets rulemakings to the White House and has only floated a plan to bring crypto exchanges under federal oversight ^[13]. Hill said the two agencies have taken different approaches depending on the part of the market involved ^[19]. The CLARITY Act would have drawn the jurisdictional line between them ^[14].

The bench writing those rules is small. Atkins and Mark Uyeda are the SEC's only commissioners and Selig is the CFTC's only one ^[9], so three of the ten leadership seats across the two agencies are filled ^[17]. Decrypt reported that exemptions and guidance can be challenged in court as well as unwound by a later administration ^[11].

If Hill gets his lame-duck vote ^[5], the bill needs at least 11 more yes votes than the 49 it drew in September ^[16], on a short calendar. Cointelegraph noted that senators in that session will vote knowing whether they are returning to Congress or leaving in January ^[23]. If the bill stays stalled, the agency rules are the regime for as long as their authors hold their seats and the White House keeps its direction. If the vacancies are filled first, the new commissioners inherit a set of mostly unfinished rules ^[20].

I'd expect the stalled-bill case. Eleven votes is a large gap for a bill that lost last month, and the bill's author is the person with the most reason to say otherwise ^[18]. A cloture vote clearing 60 before the new Congress is seated would prove that view wrong ^[4].

He still credits the regulators. He said Atkins and Selig "have taken steps to use their regulatory power, their exemptive relief, to give definition to digital assets and digital commodities, so we can have a functional system here in the U.S. for this innovative form of finance" ^[15]. What he wants on top of that is a rule a successor cannot rewrite with a new exemption. "We need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology," he said ^[3].