U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a lawmaker at the center of negotiations over the crypto industry’s main policy goal of passing a market structure bill, said negotiations are likely to have reached the necessary compromises to advance the legislation.
“We think we’ve got it,” Lummis, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee, said at the Digital Chamber’s DC Blockchain Summit on Wednesday. “We really want to get it out of the banking committee in April.”
Lummis has been deeply involved in months of conversations about the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act language. After the process was derailed by bank lobbyists who had argued that the stablecoin dividend would threaten their industry’s deposit accounts, much of the debate centered on stablecoin reward programs, which the crypto industry believed were still allowed under last year’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
The Wyoming Republican said she believes the final compromise will prevent crypto platforms from offering rewards that use any language that equates them to deposit returns or ties the rewards to the amount of assets a user holds.
“Anything that sounds like banking product terminology doesn’t appear,” she said. She added that she hasn’t seen the latest language, but she said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has been “really pretty good about being willing to give on this issue.”
Armstrong and his US exchange, which has leaned heavily into stablecoin rewards programs, had opposed an earlier compromise effort that had initially helped derail the legislative process on this bill.
Senator Bernie Moreno, another Republican on the committee, said in a video statement at the same event that two of his colleagues on the panel, Democrat Angela Alsobrooks and Republican Thom Tillis, are in the final stages of stablecoin negotiations, which also involve the White House. When they all sign out, it’s “go time” for the bill.
Previous disagreements over language governing the security of decentralized finance (DeFi) have also been resolved, Lummis said.
But at the same event, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a frequent partner of Lummis on crypto issues, said another issue that needs to be resolved is Democrats’ request that the bill prohibit senior officials from personally benefiting from the crypto industry — a concept that is particularly aimed at President Donald Trump.
“It’s very important that we include this,” she said Wednesday. No official in Congress or the White House should “get rich off their position and their knowledge base,” she said, and including such restrictions would “unlock many more votes” from Democrats on the bill.
Lummis suggested the legislation will be heard after the Senate’s Easter recess, which points toward the end of April. If it fails such a hearing, known as a markup, it would mark the second required committee approval (after the Senate Agriculture Committee already passed a version earlier this year). After that, it will be reworked into a combined version that could eventually face a vote in the full Senate.
However, the Senate schedule is very variable. Both parties are threatening unrelated legislative battles over other legislation and the war in Iran that could take up valuable floor time in the coming weeks. And the Senate’s 2026 session will also be shortened by the midterm congressional elections later this year.
“We want this thing done, come hell or high water, by the end of the year,” Lummis said.
UPDATE (18 March 2026, 15:18 UTC): Adding comments from Senator Bernie Moreno.
UPDATE (18 March 2026, 16:28 UTC): Adds comments from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to the bill’s ethics provision.
