Congress buries deregulation and crypto carve-outs in privacy bill
H.R. 2155 — Saving Privacy Act · Filed by Andrew Ogles (R-TN) · Introduced Mar 14, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill restricts government access to financial records, eliminates the SEC's consolidated audit trail for stock trading, prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, imposes new congressional approval requirements for major federal regulations, increases penalties for unauthorized financial record disclosure, raises the threshold for third-party payment reporting from $600 to $20,000, and protects individuals' use of cryptocurrency for personal purchases.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a multi-front privacy expansion (bank records, payment reporting, CBDC prohibition, crypto use) paired with a sweeping regulatory approval requirement (REINS Act) that shifts power from agencies to Congress. The title 'Saving Privacy Act' undersells the regulatory control dimension, which is equally consequential.
- Title V (REINS Act) imposes congressional approval for all major federal rules—substantively unrelated to financial privacy, appears to be a standalone deregulation vehicle.
- Title VIII (Keep Your Coins Act) prohibits federal agencies from restricting convertible virtual currency use—unrelated to bank privacy or audit trail, appears to be a crypto-advocacy rider.
What the text implies
- Raising the third-party payment reporting threshold from $600 to $20,000 and eliminating the consolidated audit trail will significantly reduce visibility into financial flows, potentially impairing anti-money-laundering, tax enforcement, and fraud detection.
- The REINS Act (Title V) creates a 70-session-day approval window for all major rules; if Congress does not affirmatively vote to approve, the rule dies. This inverts the default and may paralyze agency action on consumer protection, environmental, and labor rules even when Congress has delegated authority.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers; financial institutions (reduced compliance burden for payment reporting); regulated industries subject to major rules (deregulation via REINS Act approval bottleneck)