In the closing hours of this session of Congress, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) has released language for her bill that would require the United States government to buy a million bitcoin.

Why it matters: At this moment, the bill, S. 4912, seems unlikely to win passage, but it's more likely a bid to expand the so-called Overton window of how the U.S. government might think about cryptocurrency.

• The Overton window is the notion that certain things can be conceptualized as politically feasible, if unlikely, while things outside the window are just impossible.

The window moves, and sometimes an attention-getting piece of legislation can be part of the moving.

Catch up fast: The senator previewed the measure in Nashville last month at the Bitcoin industry's biggest annual conference, with the first eye-catching facet of the bill being its name: ''Boosting Innovation, Technology, and Competitiveness through Optimized Investment Nationwide Act of 2024.''

• That is, the BITCOIN Act of 2024.

Zoom in: It requires that 200,000 BTC be purchased per year over five years and that they be held for 20 years.

• It provides for storage procedures such that all the BTC won't be in one wallet.
• It further requires that BTC lawfully seized by the U.S. government go into the reserve.

Friction point: That last point is also what former President Trump promised to supporters at Bitcoin 2024, but it's drawn criticism from former prosecutors concerned about forfeiture law.

• Sales of seized assets typically go, at least in part, toward compensating victims of crime, they argue.

With regard to purchases, Lummis found a couple of funding streams, as we previously reported.

• A major part of the funding would come from the issuance of gold certificates, capital created by recognizing the fair market value of gold held by the U.S. government.
• Gold certificates are now only used between Fed banks.

What they're saying: "The global financial landscape is rapidly evolving, with digital assets playing an increasingly significant role in the world economy," the bill's text says, at the top of its findings.

💭 Our thought bubble: If enacted, we hope these wallets require multiple signatures, and that those keys are stored carefully but also in a distributed way.

What we're watching: Who co-sponsors the legislation; Congress.gov shows none so far.

This is our Louisiana Purchase moment.

It's the first birthday of PayPal USD (PYUSD), the stablecoin from the payments giant.

Why it matters: The fact that the company has stuck to its guns on the product, despite lacking wild uptake, continues to give some credibility to blockchains as a medium for financial technology.

How it works: PYUSD is a vanilla stablecoin like USDC or USDT.

• Managed by stablecoin services company Paxos, each PYUSD token is backed by assets worth $1 held at a financial institution.
• It is not a major stablecoin at this point. Only the seventh largest, it ranks behind the one on Tron initially made as a copy of the ill-fated stablecoin from Terraform Labs.

Zoom in: Sending PYUSD to another PayPal user within the app is free, but it goes further than that.

• In April, PayPal made cross-border dollar transactions basically free for users of PYUSD, if they use its Xoom platform.

What we're watching: This could hint at how the company believes its stablecoin can stand out from the pack.

The latest: It's seen some modest uptake out there. Recently, a Singapore fintech integrated it, and so has a U.K.-based one.

• It also started issuing directly on Solana, the blockchain designed for speed.

A group of legislators is urging the CFTC to step in on gambling around election outcomes.

Why it matters: Besides Bitcoin itself, the crypto darling of 2024 is Polymarket, the blockchain-powered market for betting on future events.

• Election bets have driven it to its busiest month ever, by far.

By the numbers: July was a monster, with $387 million bet, after June had been its biggest month at $112 million.

• August isn't a week old, and it's already at $106 million.

Catch up quick: The CFTC proposed a rule in May that would ban listed so-called event contracts used to bet on U.S. elections.

• The comment period on the proposal closes tomorrow. Once that's done, they can work on a final rule.

The latest: Legislators sent a letter to the chairman of the CFTC asking him to step in. The letter reads:

• "Election gambling fundamentally cheapens the sanctity of our democratic process. Political bets change the motivations behind each vote, replacing political convictions with financial calculations," the letter argues.
• It further suggests that the very richest could both bet on candidates that they like and place large donations for that candidate, making it more likely that the candidate they bet on wins.

The intrigue: The letter points the finger at Wall Street, rather than blockchain entrepreneurs, however.

• The letter was signed by five senators and three members of Congress, all Democrats.

Flashback: In 2022, Polymarket settled with the CFTC and took steps to prevent people in the United States from using it.

• However, bets on the U.S. elections are driving most of the interest.
• More recently, the CFTC has been stepping in against such event-based markets.

The other side: These markets are going to exist either way, John Phillips, whose company Aristotle is part of running another market, called PredictIt, told Politico, as the CFTC started taking the issue on.

• "It's just a question of whether they're going to exist and operate in an orderly, regulated [and] fair fashion with common sense regulation."

📶 Internet service provider Andrena raised $18 million to decentralize internet access. (Axios Pro)

🛞 An extremely early Bitcoin miner moved $14 million worth of BTC to new wallets. (Decrypt)

🔬 Some very mild evidence that VP Kamala Harris might be bringing some people open-minded about blockchains into her circle. (Decrypt)

🐎 One of the chief architects of Facebook's Libra describes the battle to dominate the world of stablecoins. (Harvard Business Review)

😵‍💫 The Arizona Democratic primary with an infusion of crypto cash is down to the wire. (Axios Phoenix)