Some crypto leaders met with key lawmakers on Wednesday as the US Senate takes a break from debating a bill on crypto market structure — the industry’s main political goal.
“It was a bipartisan indication of interest and forward momentum,” said Kara Calvert, Coinbase’s vice president of US policy, who spoke to CoinDesk after attending the meeting. She described the feeling in the room as, “We’re coming to a mark, and we have to find areas of compromise to get it done.”
Senator Tim Scott, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who has taken the lead in pushing the bill, hosted the meeting with several insiders and lobby groups as lawmakers continue to negotiate more details of the bill. This latest gathering included Coinbase and other crypto-related companies such as Kraken, Ripple, a16z and Chainlink, in addition to industry advocacy groups such as the Blockchain Association, Digital Chamber and DeFi Education Fund, plus Democratic lawmakers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., BNY and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
In a statement, Scott said the senators are “working on the text in a thoughtful, deliberate way.”
Attendees told CoinDesk it was a last chance in 2025 to clarify positions, such as DeFi’s defense of software developers. Nothing new was resolved, they said, but it set the stage for the upcoming negotiation in January.
Cody Carbone, executive director of the Digital Chamber, described the meeting in a Wednesday memo: “While there are still several significant policy issues to be resolved, we are optimistic that these hurdles can be cleared because Senate leaders, who took the time to meet with us today before leaving Washington for the holidays, are committed to finding common ground to define the rules of the road for digital assets in the United States.”
Many of the same executives have been routine visitors to offices on Capitol Hill in recent weeks as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have worked to find common ground on a market structure bill that could follow up on the successful effort earlier this year to pass a law regulating US stablecoin issuers.
While the industry raised hopes for more concrete action on the legislation this year, such as a committee markup in the Banking Committee or the Senate Agriculture Committee, which must also approve a bill, the year-end goal has now slipped to January. It comes with some potential complications, such as the budget deadline at the end of next month, when Congress must revisit the negotiating drama over the federal spending plans that already caused a week-long government shutdown this year.
The talks have so far hinged on issues such as the treatment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Democrats’ proposal to ban senior officials from personal business relationships with the industry, mainly aimed at President Donald Trump.
Read more: US Senate crypto market structure bill gets messy as calendar winds down
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 18:55 UTC): Adds comments from meeting participants.
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 20:02 UTC): Adding comment from Senator Tim Scott.
