SB370 would have, prior to being amended by the House, adopted a new definition of “electronic money” in the Uniform Commercial Code.
The Senate passed the original version of SB370 on March 2, 2023, by a vote of 31 to 19. We have assigned pluses to the nays because this bill initially included a disturbing change to the definition of money that would have ended free-market-based cryptocurrencies and paved the way for an exclusively government-controlled Central Bank Digital Currency—presenting a significant danger to Americans’ civil liberties. The power to “coin money,” let alone authorize or adopt the use of “electronic money,” is among the powers denied to the States in Article 1, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution.