Key Policy Update
The negotiation to get a crypto market structure bill through its next stages in the Senate have hovered over an almost-there status for weeks, and Republican lawmakers met on Thursday to figure out how to bridge the final gaps.
The White House was expected to get some updated legislative language on Thursday, reflecting the ongoing work on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, according to people familiar with the situation. But the talks are still going, and even if the previously uncertain senators (such as Republican Thom Tillis) become satisfied with the bill’s stablecoin yield treatment, other distinct compromises (such as the approach to decentralized finance) also need to be secured before the Senate would be able to send the crypto industry’s top policy priority to President Donald Trump for a signature.
The longstanding debate that had focused on stablecoin yield — on which bankers and crypto businesses have been divided over the structure of stablecoin rewards programs — is close to a finish, the people said, though lawmakers have been discussing what else the community bankers might be offered to get their support while resolving some of their other priorities. That could include some unrelated provisions tied to Congress’ recent housing legislation, according to reporting from Politico.
Regulatory Context
Officials from Trump’s administration were said to be involved with the meeting of Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, which is the second panel that needs to advance the bill before it would be repackaged into a final version that can get a vote of the overall Senate. Even if the effort advances from the committee by the end of April, as Senator Cynthia Lummis predicted this week, a couple of further hurdles may be out of lawmakers’ hands.
Democrats involved in the talks have said they still want senior government officials and lawmakers from profiting off of personal crypto interests — most pointedly aimed at Trump. And they want Democrats appointed to the party’s vacant seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before the agency adopts new crypto rules. Those are both points that could require concessions from the White House, and crypto insiders are expecting those controversial points to be the last matters settled once the lawmakers are working on a final bill.
On the yield issue, Lummis has said that stablecoin rewards programs that steer clear of bank-line language on savings and interest may survive the compromise, insisting they’re more akin to credit-card rewards than interest from bank-account deposits.
What To Watch
Lummis said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, whose opposition to a previous draft bill helped derail an earlier effort to get to a Senate hearing, has been more flexible in recent talks. The company didn’t immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on its position.
As Congress works, the Securities and Exchange Commission spent much of the week issuing and discussing new crypto policy points, including a first-ever taxonomy that sets out regulatory definitions for U.S. crypto assets. In a CoinDesk op-ed on Thursday, Chairman Paul Atkins and the two Republican commissioners suggested they’re eager to have a new law back up the policy they’re working on.
“Only Congress can rewrite the law, and we stand ready to work with [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] Chairman Michael Selig to implement the CLARITY Act,” they wrote. “In the meantime, we are providing the responsible regulatory approach that markets demand.”
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