The US Senate Banking Committee is moving closer to agreement on a bipartisan crypto market structure bill, with a vote next week, its chairman said, as industry insiders prepare for a blitz of Senate offices on Thursday.
Republicans on the committee show broad confidence that their goal is close to the long-running negotiations on a bill to create regulated crypto markets in the United States. However, Democratic negotiators have not broadly weighed in on the fast-track timeline, which Committee Chairman Tim Scott said will conclude with a Jan. 15 hearing. A document that emerged from Tuesday’s meeting, first reported by Politico, shows that while the main issues remain between the parties, several Democratic requests have been incorporated.
Many of the key issues Democrats had with the market structure bill as far back as last spring, when lawmakers were negotiating stablecoin legislation, appear to still be under discussion, including ethics, how dividends are treated, how money transmitters are treated, the role of the US Treasury Department in policing crypto and developer protection.
“I think it’s important for us to get on the record and vote,” Scott said in an interview with Brietbart published Tuesday. “So next Thursday we will have a vote on the market structure. We have worked tirelessly for the last six months to ensure that we had multiple drafts available to every member of the committee.”
All agree that there are a number of important provisions that have not been worked out between the parties, as explicitly illustrated in the document that emerged from the meeting, including the ethical demands that Democrats made based on President Donald Trump’s personal crypto tapes.
But what it also shows is the point after point of democratic demands that were met during the negotiations. They include illegal funding items that reflect input from the Treasury Department, and a number of provisions were copied from the House of Representatives’ Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
“There is motivation from both Republicans and Democrats to get this done,” Cody Carbone, executive director of the Digital Chamber, said in an interview with CoinDesk on Tuesday. “So I think there’s hope that even if there’s not 100% agreement on a bill, there’s enough support to continue to move this forward.”
Still ways to go
Scott’s long-awaited markup is a massive procedural step that would turn the corner from proposed legislation to a bill moving through the approval process itself. Since the House already passed its similar Clarity Act last year, a Senate version would complete the package that — if approved — could end up on Trump’s desk.
However, a lot has to happen before then. First, the committee must review this selection. Then there will be a matching process in the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has its own significant jurisdiction over the crypto arena and a leading regulator of the sector, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Carbone argued that a markup at this stage could better define the final points that Democrats and Republicans must work out before the final vote. Other industry lobbyists are more reserved about counting on a successful markup, suggesting that Democrats may staunchly resist moving forward until some of their key demands are addressed.
He said the industry is counting on the group of Democrats who have remained at the negotiating table. Carbone says he is optimistic they will keep the process moving, even though the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is expected to remain in vocal opposition.
The Agriculture Committee has trailed its banking colleagues significantly during this process, although its members tend to move better in bipartisan action than Scott’s committee. Once the banking panel acts, those working on the bill believe the second committee will follow suit in the coming weeks.
Here’s what still had to happen:
- Once both committees have made the mark – a process where amendments are introduced and debated – the panels vote on whether to advance the legislation.
- If committees pass that step, their two separate bills are mashed into one bill for a vote in the full Senate.
- If the bill clears that major hurdle, it will head back to the House, where it is expected to pass by a wide, bipartisan margin like the similar Clarity Act before it.
- Then a Trump signature would make it law.
Lobby pressure
The crypto industry has had its say at several points during the lengthy negotiation, including last month when industry leaders were invited to meet with senators before the December holiday break.
But the digital chamber is organizing a final push this week, with CEOs and other leaders of digital assets flying in to flood the Senate offices on Thursday, explaining how important they think this process is.
“We cover the Senate and meet with as many Senate offices as possible,” Carbone said. “And the goal is to bring a very diverse group of industry participants to answer any questions they have about market structure.” Executives from Binance.US, Unicoin, Anchorage Digital, Crypto.com and Hedera are expected to attend, among many others.
However, the industry representatives have been careful not to say whether they support the current draft law because it contains vital provisions that have not been fully drafted – including the treatment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the issue of stable coins that offer returns or rewards.
Many crypto insiders have suggested that a failure to satisfy concerns about DeFi oversight could still garner industry support. Carbone said there has been “real, substantial, bipartisan progress on DeFi.”
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