The Senate Banking Committee will hold its margin hearing on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, more commonly known as the Clarity Act, on Thursday, kicking off a key process for the long-awaited market structure bill.
Over the course of Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s 24 senators will debate and vote on dozens of proposed amendments to the text published after midnight Tuesday. Ultimately, lawmakers will vote on whether or not to bring the bill to the Senate floor.
The bill still has a long way to go to become law; If the Banking Committee advances the bill, it will have to be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version of the legislation, debated and voted on on the Senate floor, reconciled with the House version of the bill, and voted on in that chamber of Congress before it can reach the president’s desk.
Lawmakers are moving forward with Thursday’s vote after finding a compromise on stablecoin performance they found acceptable. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) negotiated the agreement and circulated the text earlier this month. Remaining questions include whether the bill will ultimately include an ethics provision prohibiting top government officials from having business ties to the crypto industry. According to a survey commissioned by CoinDesk, 73% of Americans believe that senior government officials should not have business ties to the industry, referring to senior officials in general. The impetus for including such a provision in the bill is President Donald Trump and his family’s ties to World Liberty Financial and other cryptocurrency companies.
And although lawmakers have reached a compromise on stablecoin performance, the banking industry as a whole maintains that the stablecoin performance provisions are still too tilted toward the cryptocurrency industry. State banking organizations have sent letters to lawmakers and bankers themselves have sent about 8,000 letters to senators, a source familiar said.
CoinDesk will cover the hearing live as lawmakers work through the hearing.
