‘It’s About Consumer Protection’: Bill Hagerty Addresses Confusion On GENIUS Act, Stablecoin Bill

During a Senate Republican press briefing on Tuesday, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) spoke about the GENIUS Act.

Transcript

00:00I'll tell you you may have a lot more to say about this but I'd say our members

00:12have been very open to talking but a number of them just haven't had the

00:16experience have not had the markets experience and I think everybody as they

00:20begin to talk about it understand it realize that this is a chance to

00:23actually put America at the forefront of innovation and strengthen our position

00:27as the reserve currency of the world and actually stimulate demand for US

00:31treasuries at the same time there's a lot to like about this yeah I think just the

00:36fact that coinbase is joining the S&P 500 this week helps us members of Congress

00:42see that this industry is maturing quickly and that they need to learn more about

00:49it it started with Senator Sinema and I we founded a caucus here in the

00:57Senate to help educate members and staffers about digital assets this

01:03stable coin bill the genius act is the first opportunity we've actually had to

01:09legislate on the floor of the Senate about it so many senators are learning

01:13about it in real time learning the tremendous difference between a stable

01:19coin which is a hugely different asset than Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency and there

01:26people that conflate cryptocurrencies with Bitcoin so we're making progress it's

01:31slow but finally people are recognizing the adoption adherence and involvement of

01:41this important new asset in our digital economy of the 21st century so welcome

01:47everybody I might add one more point to the education piece there seems to be a lot of

01:53confusion or I had been a lot of confusion about whether this might involve meme coins

01:59or coins issued by a particular issue or a person this legislation is agnostic as to

02:04company it's agnostic as to person this is simply about putting the United States of

02:08America on the best digital payments path that it possibly could be on this is

02:12about a payments currency and it's about consumer protection and it's about

02:15dollar dominance and Treasury dominance that's all it's about and there are a

02:19lot of superfluous questions going around but I think we've done a good job of

02:22answering those thanks thank you thank you all