Share this article

US Senator Proposes Making Distributed Ledgers ‘Key Technology Focus’

Wyoming's Cynthia Lummis wants the U.S. government to make blockchain a priority.

jwp-player-placeholder

The U.S. government should add distributed ledger technology to its list of priorities, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) said in an amendment to a bill.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the State of Crypto Newsletter today. See all newsletters

Lummis is sponsoring an amendment to add blockchain to the “Endless Frontier Act,” a bipartisan bill that would create a Directorate for Technology and Innovation and set 10 “technology focus areas” for the new entity to evaluate and create a federal strategy to address. The bill will be marked up in committee on Wednesday, meaning the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will vote on amendments and determine whether it will move to the full Senate for a vote.

Lummis’s amendment would increase the number of focus areas to 11 to “add distributed ledger technologies to the initial list.”

The current list of focus areas include artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, quantum computing, robotics, disaster prevention, communications technology, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy and materials science.

The list can be modified after three years, according to the current form of the bill.

The Endless Frontier Act, which was originally introduced last year, aims to bolster the National Science Foundation, an independent government agency tasked with supporting research in science and engineering fields.

The 2021 version would appropriate $100 billion to the new technology directorate, with $5 billion available in the 2022 fiscal year.

“China is already rolling out a digital yuan in select cities, and they want to use it ultimately to undermine the position of the U.S. dollar in the financial world,” Lummis said in a statement. “This is a national security issue, and if the U.S. does not respond we will be left behind. This amendment will put our research and development efforts regarding blockchain and financial innovation into high gear, something that is desperately needed.”

Lummis, a first-term senator and one of the Senate’s first crypto proponents, is sponsoring the bill with support from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). The two senators have formed a Financial Innovation Caucus in the Senate.

Press representatives for Sinema did not immediately return a request for comment.

Nikhilesh De

Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation, covering regulators, lawmakers and institutions. He owns < $50 in BTC and < $20 in ETH. He won a Gerald Loeb award in the beat reporting category as part of CoinDesk's blockbuster FTX coverage in 2023, and was named the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers' Journalist of the Year in 2020.

Nikhilesh De

More For You

Crypto Industry Asks President Trump to Stop JPMorgan’s 'Punitive Tax' on Data Access

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

A coalition of fintech and crypto trade groups is urging the White House to defend open banking and stop JPMorgan from charging fees to access customer data.

What to know:

  • Ten major fintech and crypto trade associations have urged President Trump to stop big banks from imposing fees that could hinder innovation and competition.
  • JPMorgan's plan to charge for access to consumer banking data may debank millions and threaten the adoption of stablecoins and self-custody wallets.
  • The CFPB's open banking rule, which mandates free consumer access to bank data, is under threat as banks have sued to block it, and the CFPB has requested its vacatur.