Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren agree on almost nothing. The Senate Banking chairman, a conservative from South Carolina, and his Democratic ranking member from Massachusetts occupy opposite ends of the economic spectrum. So when both sponsor the same legislation, it usually means something durable. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — reconciled and published on June 16 — carries a provision generating more crypto discussion than anything in its housing sections: a ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a central bank digital currency through December 2030.
The vote tallies tell the story. The Senate backed the CBDC provision 89-10 in March. The House cleared it 396-13 in May. Those are margins you rarely see in the current Congress on any contested policy question. The final vote is expected the week of June 23, when lawmakers return from recess, and the bill is expected to reach President Trump shortly after — he has backed the anti-CBDC stance consistently.
Section 1001 of the bill prohibits the Fed from issuing a CBDC or any "substantially similar" digital asset. Private stablecoins fall entirely outside the scope of the restriction. That distinction matters for the market: a Fed-backed digital dollar would have competed directly with USDC and USDT for the same core functions — payments, settlements, cross-border transfers. That competition is now off the table until at least 2031.
For Circle and Tether, the path ahead just got clearer. The stablecoin market has expanded sharply over the past two years, and the GENIUS Act — advancing separately — is expected to formalize the regulatory framework. A CBDC ban removed the one scenario where the government itself would have stepped into the same lane.
There is one dissenting corner. Some conservatives, including Rep. Scott Perry, oppose the 2030 sunset. Their argument: kicking the question down the road means a future administration can simply revisit it under different political conditions. A permanent ban would be harder to undo. The reconciled bill kept the timed restriction anyway, to preserve the legislative coalition that got it this far.
The housing provisions are substantive on their own — restrictions on institutional investors buying single-family homes, expanded local zoning authority, disaster relief funding. But the CBDC ban, buried in Section 1001, is what the crypto industry is watching as June 23 approaches.
