Blockchain legislation included in government funding package: What to Know

A Brief Update

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Blockchain bills included in continuing resolution spending package

Congress is currently finalizing the Continuing Resolution Spending Package that will keep the government funded through March 14, 2025. As is common for these end-of-year spending bills, lawmakers tend to negotiate both funding language and ‘riders,’ or pieces of standalone legislation that may have been introduced previously but never made it into law. Two riders included in the spending package are the dual House-passed bills from Rep. Larry Buschon and Senator-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester, which pair worked on in tandem, both of which Passed the House this May.

What would happen if the CR is passed with these bills included? The first bill (starting on page 251) is the Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act. The bill would require the Department of Commerce to create a program examining and promoting supply chain resiliency and economic growth, creating a program to do so. A mandate of this program is to support blockchain and distributed ledger technologies in this effort.

The second bill (starting on page 283) is the Deploying American Blockchains Act which would do the following:

Create statutory definitions for blockchain, distributed ledger technology, token, and tokenization. Each definition is non-financial, instead focusing on the technologies as data transfer, networking, storage, and computing systems.
Direct the Secretary of the Department of Commerce (current front runner and nominee for this position is Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick) to serve as the President’s principal advisor on blockchain policy and support US competitiveness in the sector.
Direct the Secretary to organize a Blockchain National Deployment Advisory Committee to examine the risks and issues surrounding blockchain-related technologies and their use across sectors and topics, including healthcare, e-commerce, supply chains, fraud reduction, AI, and decentralized identity, among others.
The Committee is also mandated to support US blockchain competitiveness, examine risk, support broad market adoption, and support federal agencies in adopting and aligning on policy for using blockchain systems.
The Committee will be appointed by the Commerce Secretary, and will include individuals from government, industry, academia, nonprofits, and think tanks, among others.
The Committee will recommend best practices for deployment and adoption of blockchain technologies.

Why it matters:

We think the inherently non-financial definitions of blockchain technologies in this bill will make it much easier to create long-term protections from the SEC for the industry. Moreover, the Committee would allow industry experts to be appointed and make direct recommendations to the Secretary. We are excited about this possibility. We will be working with TDC members to gauge policy area priorities to share with the incoming Commerce Secretary to inform the committee direction.

Next steps:

While it is not certain whether these bills will make the final version of the CR, it looks likely. The CR is set for a vote this Friday. We’ll keep everyone updated over the next couple of days.