Although the US government remains closed, the Senate is a hive of crypto activity this week, with Republican lawmakers now coinciding with a planned Democratic meeting with industry leaders scheduled for Wednesday.
After CEOs like Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov meet with up to 10 Democratic senators, according to people familiar with the plans, they will move on to a similar meeting with those lawmakers’ Republican counterparts. The main topic of conversation is the cryptocurrency industry’s top policy priority: legislation that would establish US regulation for the cryptocurrency sector as a whole.
The bill, known in the version already passed by the House of Representatives as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, had been advancing through the usual process in the Senate, where legislative efforts generally have to lean toward bipartisanship to overcome the 60-vote threshold. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee produced a working draft, but Congress then became embroiled in a budget dispute that shut down the government.
And possibly most importantly, a document showing suggested Democratic language on decentralized finance was leaked, causing an uproar among industry experts who viewed it as a potential deal breaker in the negotiations.
So Senate Democrats and industry leaders scheduled a meeting Wednesday to discuss things. And now the Republicans will hear from them too. In that second meeting, Republican industry allies will likely get an indication of where Democrats told CEOs they are encouraging the move.
Industry leaders involved in these meetings are said to include the directors of Kraken, Uniswap, Galaxy Digital, Solana Policy Institute, and senior executives from Circle, a16z Crypto, and Jito.
A prevailing sentiment among many crypto lobbyists is that it would be difficult to get the market structure bill back on track this year, and next year’s midterm elections could make any serious political efforts difficult. Without this legislation becoming law, the sector remains halfway to implementing its policy goals in the US, having celebrated a first major success with a new law to regulate stablecoin issuers.
And until Congress can open the doors of government again, lawmakers’ main focus will continue to be the budget dispute.
As they return to their crypto work, Republican cryptocurrency allies have a significant number of like-minded Democrats on the other side of the aisle who are ready to pass important cryptocurrency legislation. But Democrats had raised a number of issues to work on, including consumer protection, concerns about illicit finance and conflicts of interest raised by senior government officials involved in the industry, particularly President Donald Trump.
Both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee must produce and approve the legislation before it can get a vote on the Senate floor. The Agriculture Committee has not yet released any bills.
“Any lasting policy must be bipartisan,” Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger said in a statement to CoinDesk on Monday, stressing that both sides must agree.
Passage in the Senate would send it to the House for a similar vote. That chamber had already passed the Clarity Act with an overwhelming majority, and some senior House members have argued that the Senate could avoid many headaches by simply voting on the House Clarity Act and sending it directly to Trump.
Read more: Crypto’s half-finished legislative agenda falters as CEOs meet with Democrats
