Bryan Steil, a lawmaker representing Wisconsin’s 1st district in the US House of Representatives, will be the next chair of a digital asset-focused subcommittee in Congress after Representative French Hill.
In a Jan. 9 notice, Hill said the Wisconsin lawmaker would replace him as chair of the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Artificial Intelligence in the 119th session of Congress.
The Arkansas representative previously chaired the subcommittee but will take over leadership of the full House Financial Services Committee after the departure of Patrick McHenry, who did not run for reelection in 2024.
Hill said one of the full committee’s priorities for 2025 would be to create “a regulatory framework for digital assets.” In a September 2024 hearing, Steil said that it was “imperative” for US lawmakers to move forward in creating a crypto regulatory framework.
Steil, who has served in the House since 2019, has reported no crypto investments in his financial disclosures to the US government. However, the crypto-backed political action committee (PAC) Fairshake reported spending more than $760,000 on a media buy supporting the Wisconsin representative in his reelection bid against Democrat Peter Barca.
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Steil’s and Hill’s new committee assignments came as lawmakers were sworn into the new session of the US Congress on Jan. 3. Crypto interest groups have suggested that as many as 298 lawmakers — many of whom were supported by millions of dollars worth of media buys from PACs — in the US House and Senate were “pro-crypto.”
The House and Senate are moving forward ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Some expect the Republican leader to sign at least one executive order related to digital asset policy on his first day in office.
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