Some crypto leaders met with key lawmakers on Wednesday as the US Senate is about to take time off from negotiations on a crypto market structure bill, the industry’s most important policy goal.
“It was a bipartisan show of interest and momentum,” said Kara Calvert, vice president of US policy at Coinbase, who spoke to CoinDesk after attending the meeting. She described the feeling in the room as: “We’re going to hit a profit margin and we need to find areas of compromise to get there.”
Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who has taken the lead in trying to move the bill forward, hosted the meeting with several experts and lobbyists as lawmakers continue to negotiate various details of the bill. This latest meeting included Coinbase and other crypto-connected companies, such as Kraken, Ripple, a16z, and Chainlink, as well as industry advocacy groups such as the Blockchain Association, Digital Chamber, and DeFi Education Fund, as well as Democratic lawmakers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., BNY, and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
In a statement, Scott said senators are “working on the language in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.”
Attendees told CoinDesk it was a last chance in 2025 to clarify positions, such as DeFi’s defense of software developers. They said nothing new was resolved, but it laid the groundwork for the next negotiation in January.
Cody Carbone, executive director of the Digital Chamber, described the meeting in a Wednesday note: “While there are still several important policy issues to resolve, we are optimistic that these obstacles can be overcome because the Senate leaders, who took the time to meet with us today before leaving Washington for the holidays, are committed to finding common ground to define the rules of the road for digital assets in the US,” he said.
Many of the same executives have been routine visitors to Capitol Hill offices in recent weeks, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have worked to find common ground on a market structure bill that could follow the successful effort earlier this year to pass a law governing U.S. stablecoin issuers.
While the industry raised hopes for more concrete action on legislation this year, such as a markup in the Banking Committee or the Senate Agriculture Committee that also has to pass a bill, the year-end goal has now been pushed back to January. That comes with some potential complications, including the budget deadline at the end of next month, when Congress must revisit the drama of negotiations over federal spending plans that already caused the government to be in a weeks-long shutdown this year.
Talks have so far stalled over issues such as the treatment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Democrats’ proposal to ban top officials from having personal business ties to the industry, aimed primarily at President Donald Trump.
Read More: US Senate Crypto Market Structure Bill Gets Complicated as Calendar Runs Down
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 18:55 UTC): Add comments from meeting participants.
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 20:02 UTC): Adds a comment from Senator Tim Scott.
