After weeks of what had been close cross-party talks, Senate Democrats have delivered their latest counteroffer to the crypto market structure bill, outlining a set of demands similar to those they first laid out in a public memo in September and potentially revealing the true depth of the rift in the Senate.
The summary shared this week and circulated online earlier Wednesday shows that Democrats have accepted much of the Republicans’ proposed framework. Still, they insist on significant structural changes affecting financial stability, market integrity, enforcement of national security and the political behavior of public officials — mostly pointed at President Donald Trump.
The Democratic documents, confirmed by people familiar with the talks, offered to “reach an agreement and move forward toward an increase” on a bipartisan bill.
The document helps explain why senior Democrats are rejecting the push for a markup next week, despite repeated public assurances from GOP negotiators that the bill is nearly ready.
Their position centers on several unsettled fronts: stronger disclosure and secondary market protection of digital assets, updated tools to identify and deter illegal financing, rules preventing platforms from circumventing compliance obligations by requiring decentralization, and strict limits on stablecoin yields that reflect long-standing fears of deposit flight from local banks.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle also remain at odds over how to divide long-term oversight between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, leaving the bill’s core regulatory architecture unsettled. Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee had previously included a provision calling for bipartisan commissioners to be confirmed to those agencies in that committee’s previous bill.
Democrats are also pushing for firm ethics rules to stop elected officials from issuing or profiting from crypto projects, a demand fueled by Trump family businesses that have fueled accusations that digital assets have become Washington’s newest Swamp Asset.
One of the lead negotiators — Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the chairman of the digital assets subcommittee that is part of the Senate Banking Committee — revealed on Tuesday that the White House was already shooting down ethics provisions and demands for Democratic nominees for the federal commissions that will regulate the space. Trump and his officials have insisted there is nothing wrong with his personal business ties to the crypto sector as his administration seeks to set its policies.
The reason some lawmakers and lobbyists seem to be getting more frantic about the negotiations is that they have a handful of days left on the Senate’s 2025 calendar, which ends next week. Slipping into January puts the process on a slide against the political strain of the midterm elections and the expiring continuing resolution that currently funds the government and expires on January 30, 2026 — a government shutdown could further delay any progress that 2025’s record shutdown made.
The House of Representatives already passed a market structure bill, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, earlier this year, and its members still routinely push for the Senate to just take up their bill and make some changes instead of crafting its own legislation. But while much of the Clarity Act is repeated in the earlier drafts of the Senate’s work, it is still developing a tailored version.
As lawmakers continue to hash out, progressive groups and labor unions have circled around criticizing the current effort as a potential threat to America’s financial stability and dangerous to retirees who rely on fixed pensions. They join Senator Elizabeth Warren and like-minded lawmakers, the Democrats, who have long criticized the rise of the crypto sector. Although Warren has been sidelined by many in her party, who negotiate directly with Republicans, she remains the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, one of the two panels that must pass the bill.
