Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury secretary, arrives at a Eurogroup meeting of European Union (EU) finance ministers in Brussels, Belgium.
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The Treasury Department will not oppose a bipartisan agreement that limits a proposal in the infrastructure bill to increase federal regulation of cryptocurrencies.
The agreement, which centers on two rival crypto amendments, is the product of negotiations with Treasury and won’t be opposed by Secretary Janet Yellen, said a person familiar with the discussions. The person declined to be named as the Treasury had yet to announce its stance.
In a statement, Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Mark Warner, D-Va., Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said that were grateful for the Treasury Department’s counsel.
“We’ve worked with the Treasury Department to clarify the underlying text and ensure that those who are not acting as brokers will not be subject to the bill’s reporting requirements,” the group said in a press release.
“While we each would have drafted this solution differently, we all agree it’s important to ensure that these obligations are properly crafted to apply only to entities that are regularly effectuating transactions of digital assets in exchange for consideration,” they added.
Toomey and Lummis said Monday morning that Treasury approves of the new plan.
The White House had initially backed an amendment supported by Warner, Sinema and Portman, which would have exempt more cryptocurrency actors from greater regulation than the bill’s original language, but fewer than Wyden, Toomey and Lummis wanted.
But with Treasury now supporting a deal between the two sides, the compromise is likely somewhere in the middle. The details of the agreement between the two groups of senators were not available as of early Monday afternoon.
The Treasury Department declined to comment.
Bitcoin was up 5.1% on the session at $45,886 as of 1:37 p.m. ET.
