Crypto bill clears U.S. Senate milestone as effort advanced through first committee

A U.S. Senate committee formally advanced the crypto market structure bill on Thursday, moving to a new stage with the legislation that the industry hopes will help it reach a new plateau of investor confidence and involvement.

This is as far as the crypto sector’s top policy effort has ever progressed in the Senate, though there are some headwinds. The committee working on the bill was the Senate Agriculture Committee, and its Republican chairman chose to step away from negotiations and vote on the legislation without bipartisan support. The resulting Republican-driven result — concluding quickly with a 12-11 party-line vote — will still need to gather significant Democratic support before it can eventually clear the structural hurdles of the Senate.

“After months of work, we have made significant progress, really significant progress working together,” said committee Chairman John Boozman, as the panel began work. “Now it’s time to move this process forward.”

Democrats at the long-awaited markup session lined up as a unified block to oppose Republican preferences, illustrating the partisan standoff that’s yet to be overcome. Several Democrats noted they hope to keep working on it to get to a bipartisan version, and Boozman himself acknowledged that the text can be updated through a manager’s amendment before it proceeds through the Senate.

“The progress that has been made here is good, but I think we believe that we’re not quite done yet,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, the panel’s ranking Democrat. “I hope we can continue to negotiate as this bill moves forward.”

The Agriculture Committee is one of two panels that ultimately need to sign off on the legislation. However, it’s the Senate Banking Committee that might have the tougher time, because its version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act contains some of the more controversial elements, including the question of stablecoin yield. That effort, though, has been delayed in its own markup and stymied by the search for a compromise that will satisfy a number of interests, including Wall Street banking lobbyists.

The White House intends to host another meeting next week with the intent to find common ground among crypto, banking, Republican, Democratic and administration interests. President Donald Trump and his representatives have pushed back on a couple of central points in the legislative effort, including Democrats’ demands that he and other senior government officials be blocked from personally benefiting from crypto business interests.

Senator Corey Booker, the lead Democrat negotiator, said the White House has made progress on the bill “infinitely harder.””This is ridiculous that the president of the United States and his family have made billions of dollars off of this industry and are still trying to create a framework here without the kind of ethics that would prevent this kind of gross corruption in our country,” Booker said.

On Thursday, the hearing’s first amendment addressed the Democrats’ ethics component.

Boozman also seemed to support another of the Democrats’ requests, that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission get a full slate of commissioners as it moves into a leading role in overseeing crypto.

“It’s essential to have a completely staffed, bipartisan commission,” he said.

The chairman noted as the markup concluded that the committee now needs to work with its Banking Committee counterparts and with lawmakers in the House of Representatives to come up with something that can be supported by both parties. He also said some of the amendments offered were better suited to that committee’s version of the bill.

If all goes well, this is what’s needed to turn the bill into law:

• After the legislation cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday, it eventually needs to do the same in the Banking Committee.
• The distinct versions would need to be combined for a final Senate floor bill, which potentially gives the bill’s advocates another chance to satisfy resistant Democrats.
• A combined bill could then be presented to the Senate for a final vote.
• A yes at that stage moves it back to the House of Representatives, which already passed its own version of the legislation with an overwhelming majority.
• Another approval sends the Clarity Act to Trump to be signed into law.

The crypto industry is already sitting on a high-stakes win in this congressional session, having advanced a bill to govern U.S. stablecoin issuers into law, making its first major legislative victory in the U.S. But the industry has a tightening window to get this even bigger bill through as the Senate battles over federal funding and is getting nearer November’s midterm elections.

Read More: Live blog: Senate Agriculture Committee advances crypto market structure bill