BTC falls below the $96000 mark

According to The Block, French Hill, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee and a Republican from Arkansas, has released a draft legislation to regulate stablecoins, and U.S. lawmakers are pushing for rule making for these assets. Hill and Wisconsin Republican Congressman Bryan Steill released a discussion draft on stablecoins on Thursday, based on years of work by the House Financial Services Committee. Steil leads the committee's group focused on digital assets. Hill and Steil are seeking feedback on the draft, which will be discussed at next week's hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. For many years, lawmakers have been working hard to pass a stablecoin bill, with the main focus on the House of Representatives. One controversial point of the bill is the provision allowing state regulators to approve stablecoin issuances without the involvement of the Federal Reserve. The discussion draft is slightly different from the previous stablecoin bill. For example, it empowers the Office of the Superintendent of Currency (OCC) to "approve and supervise federally qualified non bank payment stablecoin issuers," rather than providing a federal pathway for "payment stablecoin issuers" through the Federal Reserve. Earlier this week, Republican Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee proposed a stablecoin regulatory bill called the "Guiding and Establishing a National Innovation Act for Stablecoins in the United States". The discussion draft is not a supporting bill for the Hagerty Act, but Hill and Steil stated that both bills reflect the Republicans' efforts on key issues.

Florida Republican Senator Joe Gruters filed a bill on Friday proposing that the state be allowed to invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.Gruters’s bill outlines that Florida’s CFO’s investments “in Bitcoin may not exceed 10% of the total funds in any account.”

DarkFi, the privacy-focused crypto project, has unveiled a working alpha version of its app.Early Bitcoin developer Amir Taaki, who founded the project, said the team will build a suite of products to tie into this fully anonymous, P2P chat.

As Utah became the first state to get a bill through a legislative chamber that would allow the investment of public money into crypto assets, lawmakers in two other states joined the hunt this week: Kentucky and Maryland.Though broadly identified with the Republican-led charge toward a so-called "bitcoin strategic reserve" at the federal level, the states have moved their own measures, widely varied as to how each might invest state money into digital assets.See all newslettersUtah's bill to allow the state treasurer to put money into digital assets survived a tight vote in the Utah House of Representatives — advancing with just a three-vote margin — to head on Friday to the state senate. If it clears both chambers and is signed into law by the governor, the legislation would permit investing public money into stablecoins or cryptocurrency with a market cap of more than $500 billion, which is currently a single-name list: bitcoin.The new bill in Maryland this week, introduced by Democrat Delegate Caylin Young, pushes for a bitcoin (BTC) strategic reserve, much like the one contemplated by U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis. In Maryland, the reserve would be funded through revenue from the enforcement of gambling violations.The legislation in Kentucky also landed this week, with two bills — so far — that would open state retirement funds for investment in digital assets exchange-traded funds. The bills would also throw up roadblocks for the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).Most of the state bills have steered clear of calling for new taxpayer money to be channeled into crypto.U.S. Bitcoin Reserve May Be Coming, But States Are Winning the RaceFifteen other states are weighing legislation in their current sessions, with others expected to follow, and another two states — Michigan and Wisconsin — already have portions of their retirement funds in crypto ETFs. The surge in state interest mostly developed after the election of President Donald Trump and his stated interest in a strategic stockpile of digital assets.Trump issued an executive order calling for his administration's crypto working group to examine the possibilities of a crypto stockpile for the U.S., though he's stopped short of calling for a strategic bitcoin reserve.

The US stock market closed down, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 0.99%, the Nasdaq falling 1.36%, and the S&P 500 index falling 0.95%.