The U.S. House vote goes279-136to approve the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act with a very strong showing from House Democrats.
The passage of the crypto market-structure bill marks the industry's most significant legislative accomplishment in Congress.

The crypto industry recorded its biggest-ever U.S. policy win on Wednesday when the House of Representatives approved a wide-reaching bill to establish regulations for digital assets markets, recording a 279-136 vote that saw Democrats crossing party lines to support it.

Latest News: U.S. House Passes Bill Banning Federal Reserve From Issuing a CBDC

The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) marks the first time a major crypto bill has cleared one of the chambers of Congress. The issue now heads to the U.S. Senate, where its future is much murkier, because there's no counterpart bill. Support for such an effort remains unclear there, and the necessary committees haven't done the same level of work on crypto.

The U.S. has fallen behind other global jurisdictions in establishing crypto regulations, and despite the win on Wednesday, implementing such oversight is far from complete.

"We need rules of the road," said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), one of the Democrats who bucked the opposition of the White House and the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). He called it "well-reasoned, thoughtful, bipartisan legislation" and argued before the vote that "it's fit to become law if we work together."

Overall, 71 Democrats and 208 Republicans voted in favor of the bill, versus 3 Republicans and 133 Democrats who voted against.

President Joe Biden opposed the bill with a policy statement, though he didn't say he'd veto the bill, as he had recently when Congress sought to overturn a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) effort to set crypto accounting policy. SEC Chair Gary Gensler also came out strongly against the legislation in a lengthy public statement arguing the bill wasn't needed and endangered existing securities regulations.

The legislation – largely driven by House Republicans – would establish a regime to regulate the U.S. crypto markets, setting consumer protections, installing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a leading regulator of digital assets and the watchdog of the non-securities spot markets and it would more clearly define what makes a crypto token a security or a commodity.

Waters argued that the bill is seeking to let the crypto businesses who have been dodging securities laws avoid responsibility.

"They have already made billions of dollars unlawfully issuing or facilitating the buying and selling of crypto securities," Waters said. "And Republicans are now proposing to reward these illegal activities by making these activities legal."

Prior to Wednesday afternoon's vote, the House debated a handful of amendments to the bill, including by Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Brittany Pettersen (D-Co.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.). Casar's amendment to change a crowdfunding exemption from $75 million to $5 million was defeated, but the rest were adopted.

UPDATE (May 22, 2024, 21:48 UTC): Adds vote count, removes CBDC bill mention.

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Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.

Nikhilesh De

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation, covering regulators, lawmakers and institutions. When he's not reporting on digital assets and policy, he can be found admiring Amtrak or building LEGO trains. He owns < $50 in BTC and < $20 in ETH. He was named the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers' Journalist of the Year in 2020.