Nellie Liang, the U.S. Treasury Department Under-Secretary of Domestic Finance, said at the meeting that “tech companies that are not licensed as banks should not launch stablecoins into the market.”
“Companies Conducting Stablecoin Operations Should Be Regulated Like Banks”
In his speech, Liang stated that the strict rules applied to banks should be applied to companies that issue tokens to be used as payment for goods and services.
These statements by Liang came after Facebook sold the Diem project, which it had been working on for years, last month.
The Undersecretary also said that the Treasury Department supports the stablecoin legislation prepared by Democrat representative Josh Gottheimer, but that they should take a more detailed look at the bill.
Liang added that they think differently about the bill and there are some areas that need to be discussed.
Discussions about stablecoins have flared up since 2019.
In his statement today, Liang said, cryptocurrency He said that for the rapidly growing industry of stablecoins, it is essential for Congress to issue legislation.
In his interview before the meeting, Liang said: “This issue must be addressed urgently due to the high growth rate of the market in question.”
Liang stated that the stablecoin market, which was at the level of 5 billion dollars at the beginning of 2020, has jumped up to 175 billion dollars.
As it is known, stablecoins can be defined as digital currencies indexed to the US dollar or other fiat currencies.
The Congressional move requested by Liang comes after a call last year by the “US Presidential Financial Markets Working Group” to regulate stablecoins like banks.