Key senators critical of advancing crypto market structure legislation may soon be willing to move forward with the bill, people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk.
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Crypto traders’ hopes are bubbling over the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the Senate legislation that represents the top policy hope for the sector. The key senators — those who had been dragging their feet over the stablecoin dividend — are reviewing what appears to be a final bid from bankers on what their industry would consider acceptable, according to people familiar with the talks.
After weeks of an increasingly tense relationship between crypto insiders and bank representatives tasked with devising a compromise, it came to a head this week with new legislative language circulating from bankers on the stablecoin rewards debate. President Donald Trump made an aggressive argument on his Truth Social website that the banks were trying to use the Clarity Act to undermine the already passed stablecoin law, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act.
“The Genius Act was America’s first major step to make the United States the crypto capital of the world, and passing the Clarity Act is the next step to finish the job and, most importantly, keep this great and powerful industry in our country,” Trump had argued after the meeting with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. “The banks should not try to undercut the Genius Act or hold the Clarity Act hostage.”
Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, said the White House’s “weighing in on the negotiations and encouraging the banks to negotiate in good faith adds important momentum as negotiations continue.”
For their part, the banks have maintained that the foundation of US banking and lending depends on customer deposits, and they say a crypto industry alternative to those accounts could derail banks. That argument landed heavily with Senators Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, and Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat, and the rest of the Senate Banking Committee has been waiting to see if they are ready to move forward with a markup of the bill. At this point, an upcoming compromise that could allow a narrow range of stablecoin rewards appears to resemble positions previously favored by lawmakers.
In an interview with CNBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon to signal by his sector’s openness to the compromise that there is room for rewarding stablecoin activities and transactions, as long as stablecoins held in one place should not be rewarded with a return similar to interest on a savings account. He also said that crypto firms that act as deposit-taking institutions must follow the same strict regulators as banks.
President Trump’s son, Eric, added his views on social media X. He is an advisor at World Liberty Financial Inc., the crypto firm partially owned by the Trump family, which itself has a stablecoin business. Eric Trump called the bankers “anti-consumer and outright anti-American.”
“Let me make this very clear: Big Banks (think JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc.) are lobbying overtime to block Americans from getting higher returns on their savings — while trying to block any rewards or perks from being given to customers,” he wrote.
With all these comments flying, crypto representatives are quietly hoping that the Clarity Act will go into effect next week.
“Senator Tillis has been very receptive to our discussions about stablecoin dividends,” Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, said in a statement to CoinDesk. “I’m optimistic that we will find a way to get a ‘yes’ vote on the bill, and we appreciate his work in trying to advance market structure rules down the road.”
If the Senate Banking Committee can advance the bill through a markup hearing, the text will be paired with an earlier version that has already passed the Senate Agriculture Committee on a party-line vote. However, the combined version would need significant support from Democrats if it has any chance of passing a vote in the broader Senate.
The process still faces the Senate’s ticking clock, where floor time is at a premium and midterm congressional elections will scatter lawmakers starting this summer. The Senate calendar likely allows only a few months of leeway before the door begins to close on a 2026 clarity bill.
Thursday
- 14:00 UTC (10:00 am ET) The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor Advisory Committee will hold a meeting where, among other topics, it will discuss a recommendation on how the regulator should handle tokenized equity securities.
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