Senator calls out Treasury Secretary Yellen's handling of pending stablecoin report

Senator Pat Toomey is not pleased with the U.S. Treasury's much-anticipated work on stablecoins. 

In an October 7 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Toomey criticized the process behind a much-anticipated report on stablecoins from the President's Working Group.

The PWG is a collective of U.S. financial regulators including the Treasury. They are currently working on a framework for regulating stablecoins, with Yellen driving the project. The Biden administration has been sounding the alarm on stablecoins with increasing vigor. The term "systemic risk" and comparisons to the wildcat banks of the 19th century have grown more common. 

Toomey's letter voiced concerns that the PWG has kept the pending framework behind closed doors and hasn't sought enough input from the crypto industry and stablecoin operators.

"Since the PWG announced its stablecoin review, the administration has revealed very little about the process it is using to draft this report. It is my understanding that stakeholders have had only minor involvement in the process, with just a few stablecoin providers invited to participate. Those invited participants were given a mere five minutes each to make highly structured presentations."

Toomey also cautioned against bringing the Financial Stability Oversight Council to bear against stablecoins, a prospect recently reported by Bloomberg. "The administration would do well to remember that America’s longstanding status as the world’s leading economy is due, in no small part, to our tradition of fostering technological innovation, not stifling it," the letter concluded.

The leading republican of the Senate Banking Committee, Toomey has emerged in recently as possibly the highest-profile advocate for cryptocurrency in Congress. He was, for example, a driving force behind an amendment to change controversial crypto taxation provisions in the infrastructure bill.