Summary
- President Donald Trump has cancelled a celebratory signing of Congress’ bipartisan housing bill, which pauses the legislation’s CBDC ban and also could have implications for the crypto Clarity Act.
- The housing legislation had included a four-year ban on a Federal Reserve CBDC, which was a welcome development for digital-dollar critics in the crypto industry, but it’ll have to wait for the rest of the package to get signed into law.
- The industry’s primary focus in Washington, the Clarity Act, likely has only a handful of weeks left to get approval by the Senate, so any major delay could be a difficult obstacle.
U.S. President Donald Trump has refused to sign a law that includes a four-year ban on central bank digital currencies, which was part of Congress’ housing affordability bill, until he gets unrelated legislation passed that would demand proof of citizenship from voters.
Trump had a signing ceremony planned for Wednesday, but he stated in a post on Truth Social that it’s “hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.” But a domino effect of that position could also endanger the timing of the crypto industry’s more urgent policy effort for its market structure bill.
The legislation Trump is demanding carries a number of contentious federal voting policies to require citizenship proof and identification from voters, though Republican leaders have reportedly hit a wall on support for the bill. The president had made a threat earlier this year to block all other legislation until the SAVE America Act lands on his desk, though until Wednesday morning, he’d been planning on the signing of the major effort to address the affordability of homes in the U.S.
