House crypto subcommittee chair wants to focus on fraud prevention

• "The players on the field have shifted dramatically. That gives us an opportunity to offer legislation a little more forward looking," Steil told Axios in an interview the week before the Inauguration.
• "With President Trump coming to office we have an administration that embraces the benefits of crypto and digital assets."

Background: Steil took over the seat of former House speaker Paul Ryan in 2018. In addition to the subcommittee, he serves as the chair of the Committee on House Administration, which oversees all the internal operations of the chamber.

• His predecessor on the subcommittee, Rep. French Hill (R.-Ark.), is now the chair of the full House Financial Services committee.

Zoom in: "I've been focused out of the gates on what I think are possibly the two most important pieces which I think are market structure and stablecoin legislation," Steil told Axios.

• He said he's going to be judging measures by a simple two-point framework: Preventing fraud and making sure the industry remains in the U.S.
• "What we don't want to do is put our heads in the sand and pretend as if this innovation and development is not going to occur anywhere."

Between the lines: Under most proposals, market structure refers to sorting out which digital assets should be regulated by the CFTC and which by the SEC.

• Stablecoins refers to how financial institutions in the U.S. can launch assets that are backed by U.S. dollars, or dollar-like assets. There are other kinds of more exotic stablecoins as well that lawmakers might deal with one way or another.

Zoom out: Steil brought us back to the early days of the internet, when Congress worked with a then nascent tech industry to write rules that would allow it go grow in the USA.

• "Although I have many challenges with big tech, and I do," Steil said, "Most of those companies are domiciled in the United States, and that gives us significant global competitive advantages."
• "What we want to do is make sure that innovation and development is occurring here in the United States."

Go deeper: Senate Banking Committee convenes its first digital assets subcommittee