Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and three other House lawmakers have introduced a bill to clarify the regulatory oversight process for cryptocurrency trading platforms.

The Digital Commodity Exchange Act of 2022 seeks to regulate spot stablecoin markets and complement investor protection efforts at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Khanna’s office said Thursday.

A document summarizing the bill indicates that the bipartisan legislation would bridge a gap between digital asset regulations set forth by SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“To foster American innovation and tech job growth, Congress must establish a clear process for creating and trading digital commodities that prioritizes consumer protections, transparency and accountability,” Khanna said.

Reps. Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Penn.; Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Darren Soto, D-Fla., are the other DCEA sponsors.

Charles River Analytics has received additional funding from the U.S. Navy to further develop a technology platform that could help detect maritime objects and create maps of the ocean surface in real-time. 

The company said Tuesday the Real-Time Ortho-Mosaicking for Awareness and Navigation system is a set of software components that applies autonomy and computer vision for real-time ocean mapping and could enable the service branch to improve situational awareness for anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue, counter-surveillance and other maritime operations.

ROMAN forms and continuously update an ortho-mosaic or detailed map of the sea surface by ingesting video from electro-optical and infrared sensors aboard an unmanned aircraft system.

Charles River received more than $1.1 million in funding from the Navy following a proof of concept of its technology.

“Keeping up-to-date maps over the open ocean and for aircraft to navigate without the aid of vulnerable external guidance information like GPS presents unique challenges. This project will help provide up-to-the-minute maps and navigational information in contested environments,” said Todd Jennings, a scientist at Charles River and principal investigator on the ROMAN project.

Nine industry groups have called on House and Senate lawmakers to maintain support for federal information technology transformation by exceeding or meeting the $300 million that the Biden administration requested for the Technology Modernization Fund in its fiscal year 2023 budget proposal.

The associations asked the legislators through an April 29 letter that “appropriations be structured to help ensure agencies can make progress on IT modernization needs through additional flexibility.”

They highlighted the need for funding to meet the federal government’s cybersecurity goals and requirements in support of the cybersecurity executive order that directs agencies to adopt zero trust.

“Additional funding should be made available for agencies that are just getting started on their zero trust journeys because these cybersecurity efforts are essential to maintaining a strong federal network defense posture for years to come,” the letter reads.

The letter was signed by Alliance for Digital Innovation, Professional Services Council, The Center for Procurement Advocacy, CompTIA, Information Technology Industry Council, National Defense Industrial Association, Security Industry Association, TechNet and the Software & Information Industry Association.

National Taxpayer Associate Erin Collins said the Internal Revenue Service should improve online service offerings to better meet the needs of individual and corporate taxpayers and tax professionals and one of the measures is the need to expand online account functionality and features.

Collins wrote in a blog post published Thursday that the Online Account application should provide taxpayers with the capability to easily access IRS online tools, information and services.

“The IRS should continue to leverage its online services to provide personalized messages based on the specific taxpayer’s interaction,” she wrote. “By including targeted links to IRS.gov and IRS video content, the IRS could promote compliance and bolster taxpayer satisfaction relatively inexpensively.”

Collins noted that the IRS has made progress when it comes to enhancing the identity authentication process to protect sensitive financial data and prevent fraud and suggested that taxpayers should be given a capability to get access to digital services using a self-service mechanism or a video chat agent during the identity verification process. 

“A single secure log-in combined with a consolidated resources page or customer hub shown after log-in may increase taxpayer confidence and knowledge in using online services and products,” she added.

Collins also highlighted the need for the IRS to provide taxpayers with the ability to use a single portal that would enable them to transmit and receive messages, check the status of an amended or original tax return, download and upload data and documents and receive emails of pending action items, among others.

The “Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets,” released on March 9 by President Biden, made a case for the United States’ government and financial institutions to take seriously the recent and robust proliferation of digital currency. Nathan Jones, senior vice president and general manager of worldwide public sector sales and government affairs at TaxBit, has shared his thoughts on the executive order and its implications for the finance and government contracting landscape.

“The EO will be a tool that helps enable widespread cryptocurrency understanding and adoption while instilling confidence that digital assets will eventually align with traditional regulatory provisions such as broker reporting,” Jones commented.

Biden’s issuance posits a potential way forward for digital assets and the attendant distributed ledger technology into mainstream acceptance and policy but it did not codify any digital currency-related practices into law. It is, after all, the first piece of literature regarding digital assets put forward by the federal government.

“Although many policymakers historically have been hesitant to adopt digital assets, the EO is a signal that the Biden administration wants the U.S. to embrace digital assets as a source of financial innovation,” Jones said.

The TaxBit SVP also explains that the executive order highlighted the need for digital asset legislature in six categories: consumer and investor protection, financial stability, illicit finance, U.S. authority in the global financial market, financial inclusion and thoughtful innovation.

“The EO is an important step in furthering the adoption of cryptocurrency for consumers, enterprises, and businesses,” Jones remarked decisively.

Additionally, the executive order floated the idea of a U.S. central bank digital currency, as well as forewarned about the environmental costs of cryptocurrency mining, which requires high energy input. If cryptocurrency is brought into the fold on a federal level, Biden is clear that its energy usage — mostly by computers processing the necessary algorithms — must be controlled.

Jones reports that over the next several months, President Biden and his administration plan to work with various agencies to develop policies that mitigate risk and create a responsible pipeline for digital currency activities.

“The balanced whole-of-government approach is setting the tone for the overall strategy of digital asset regulation while accelerating mainstream adoption and bolstering the worldwide crypto ecosystem,” Jones concluded.