US crypto market structure bill slips as Senate Banking reprioritizes

The slowdown follows last week’s abrupt postponement of a scheduled committee markup after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company could not support the latest version, citing multiple concerns and warning that the bill would restrict stablecoin rewards and reshape the balance of authority between regulators. The committee pulled the session late Wednesday ahead of the planned Thursday debate.

US crypto legislation, often referred to as the CLARITY Act, is intended to draw clearer lines for when digital tokens are treated as securities or commodities and to clarify the respective roles of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission across crypto markets. Supporters have framed the package as a pathway to a more coherent federal rulebook after years of regulatory disputes and enforcement-driven uncertainty.

One of the most contentious issues has been whether platforms should be allowed to pay interest-like returns or rewards linked to stablecoin holdings. Banking groups have argued such features could pull deposits out of the traditional banking system, while crypto firms have pushed back that restrictions would curb competition and product design. The Senate bill includes language aimed at limiting interest payments tied to stablecoins while permitting certain rewards tied to activity, but the boundary has remained a flashpoint in negotiations.

Another pressure point has been amendments outside pure market-structure questions. More than 100 proposed amendments were described as contentious in the run-up to the postponed Banking Committee vote, and separate disagreements have included whether to add ethics language aimed at limiting senior officials’ ability to profit from crypto ventures, as well as how the bill should treat decentralized finance and software developers.

While the Banking Committee slows, the Senate Agriculture Committee is moving forward on its own track. Committee chair John Boozman released an updated draft focused on regulating “digital commodity intermediaries” under the CFTC and said he intends to take it to markup next Tuesday, even though he acknowledged that fundamental policy differences remain and bipartisan alignment is incomplete.

That Agriculture Committee approach targets registration and compliance rules for trading platforms and related services that fall under a “digital commodity” frame, while the broader House-backed CLARITY framework addresses asset classification and the SEC–CFTC jurisdiction split across the wider market. The two tracks would ultimately need to be reconciled before any final bill could reach the full Senate.

The executive branch has also kept pressure on lawmakers to keep the process moving. Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, has urged lawmakers to push ahead, and President Trump said in Davos that Congress is working on market-structure legislation and that he hopes to sign it soon.

Housing delay leaves the timeline uncertain heading into a year when backers are wary of losing momentum as the midterm election cycle approaches. Policy analysts tracking the bill have warned that if committees cannot resolve the disputed provisions quickly, the path could stretch into spring or beyond, raising the risk that a comprehensive framework is pushed into the next Congress.