- This amendment was proposed by Democrat Latrice Walker.
- This will allow courts to accept digital assets as collateral.
- But for now, we are talking only about fiat-backed stablecoins.
Yesterday, May 10, Democrat Latrice Walker introduced a bill that would add digital assets to the list of eligible funds for repayment of collateral obligations. The document intersects with the initiative of the New York Attorney General’s Office on additional leverage on cryptocurrency exchanges.
The text of the bill can be found at link. Notably, only fiat-backed stablecoins are mentioned as a valid way to redeem collateral.
There is no list of specific tokens in the document. It is also not completely clear whether this applies only to “internal” assets or “external” (issued by a company outside US jurisdiction) too.
The chances that the bill will be passed are quite high. Prior to this, on May 5, the New York Attorney General’s Office proposed a bill called “On the Regulation, Protection, Transparency and Supervision of Cryptocurrency.”
Among other things, it will give law enforcement authorities the authority to impose sanctions or even completely close the exchange suspected of fraud. Also, service providers in the state will be required to compensate for the loss of customers affected by the scam.
How this will work in practice, given that there is still no regulatory definition of cryptocurrency in the US, is not entirely clear. But it is obvious that the state wants to fill the treasury at the expense of large “players” in the industry.
This will entail changes in the criminal procedure legislation. Therefore, there will be a need for additional “clarifications”. In such circumstances, Walker’s bill seems like a timely and adequate amendment to the regulatory framework.
The most high-profile and “expensive” in the cryptocurrency community was the bail of Sam Bankman-Freed. Two guarantors paid $250 million for him. Only thanks to this, he is awaiting trial under house arrest, and not in prison.
