Update (Thursday, 3:52 am UTC): This article has been updated to add further information on the vote’s negotiations.
House Republican leaders have cut a deal to move forward with three crypto bills that were stuck in a record-long procedural vote after Republican hardliners refused to back down on central bank digital currencies.
A vote to set up floor debate on the bills was open for over nine hours — the longest in the House’s history. The measure eventually passed late on Wednesday with a vote of 217-212 in favor.
A group of Republican holdouts initially refused to support the vote unless a ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) was guaranteed to pass, but House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters on Wednesday that Republicans will now instead add a CBDC ban to a must-pass defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
House Republican leaders dubbed this week “Crypto Week” and are looking to pass a crypto market structure bill called the CLARITY Act, the CBDC-banning Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act and the stablecoin-regulating GENIUS Act — the latter of which President Donald Trump wants to sign before the weekend.
PunchBowl News reported that Scalise said the House would vote separately on the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act as soon as Thursday, but Speaker Mike Johnson said votes on bills other than the GENIUS Act could be pushed to Friday or next week.
CBDC ban a sticking point
The anti-CBDC Republican holdouts also tripped up an earlier resolution on Tuesday for the three crypto bills.
One of the Republican holdouts that later changed his vote, Representative Keith Self, earlier said that the GENIUS Act “will allow a back door to a CBDC.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene was the sole Republican representative to vote with Democrats in opposing the measure.
The GENIUS Act, however, says the bill should not be interpreted as expanding the Federal Reserve’s authority to offer services directly to the public, which would include a CBDC.
CBDC ban could go in must-pass defense bill
House Republican leaders had promised the party’s hardliners to put a CBDC ban in the NDAA defense spending bill, which has always been passed.
Republican Representative Tim Burchett, who originally voted against moving the bills forward, said in a video posted to X earlier on Wednesday that the negotiations had involved moving the CBDC ban to the NDAA.
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“If they adjust this [the GENIUS Act], they kill the bill if it goes back to the Senate, and so they’re thinking about trying to make some changes later,” he added.
Republican leaders, including Speaker Johnson, had suggested that the Senate wouldn’t pass the bills if they were all tied together in his push to pass them separately.
Record-long vote held open
The vote dragged on for over nine hours and is the longest in the House’s history, beating a previous record set earlier this month during a vote for Trump’s tax and spending megabill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
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