The Senate blocked federal crypto rules. Alaska already wrote its own

The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday not to take up the first federal rulebook for digital assets, leaving unsettled which agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, oversees what in a market that has been operating without a clear answer for years. The motion to proceed failed 49-50, eleven short of the 60 it needed. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan both voted to advance it.

The bill had already passed the House. Beyond dividing oversight between the two agencies, it would have barred Federal Reserve banks from offering certain products directly to individuals and prohibited using a central bank digital currency as a tool of monetary policy, a provision favored by groups including the Cato Institute that see a government-issued digital dollar as a surveillance risk.

Alaska did not wait for Washington. Senate Bill 249, from Sen. Cathy Tilton of Wasilla, became law July 1. It requires anyone operating a cryptocurrency kiosk in the state to be licensed, post fraud warnings on the machine, verify customer identity, observe daily and monthly transaction limits, cap fees, and refund victims where fraud is proven.

Tilton introduced it after her own mother was scammed through one. Alaskans lost more than $26 million to online fraud in 2024, and seniors accounted for about a third of that. The kiosks are attractive to scammers because the transfers are fast, anonymous and effectively impossible to reverse.

The bill passed the House unanimously and carried 15 of the Senate's 20 members as sponsors. Bitcoin Depot, which ran thousands of the machines nationally, filed for bankruptcy this year, and the Alaska Department of Law spent the summer telling residents scammed through its kiosks how to file claims.