The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will not hold any hearings on market structure legislation that defines how federal regulators can oversee the industry until next year, banking on a long-awaited hearing that many had intended to hold toward the end of this week.
A spokesman for the committee said in a statement Monday that “the chairman [Tim] Scott and the Senate Banking Committee have made great progress with their Democratic counterparts” on the bill, but lawmakers were still negotiating.
While the delay was expected, it is still a blow to the crypto industry, which at least wanted to see a margin hearing, in the absence of more substantial progress toward a sweeping new law expected in 2025. It is unclear how quickly lawmakers could resume negotiations in the new year. Congress’ main focus will be funding the US government after it returns from the holidays, as a current funding bill is set to expire on January 30. Assuming the government doesn’t shut down again, lawmakers will still have a limited amount of time to work on market structure before next year’s midterm elections become their top priority.
“From the beginning, Chairman Scott has been clear that this effort must be bipartisan,” the committee spokesman said. “It has consistently and patiently engaged in good faith discussions to produce a strong bipartisan product that provides clarity for the digital asset industry and also makes the United States the crypto capital of the world. The Committee continues to negotiate and expects a profit margin in early 2026.”
The market structure bill aims to define how the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can oversee cryptocurrency markets, designating the CFTC as a primary spot market regulator for cryptocurrencies and more clearly defining how securities laws could apply to the sector.
The Banking Committee, which oversees the SEC, has produced several drafts, while the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC, has produced one discussion draft so far and will also need to hold its own margin hearing.
Democrats’ sticking points include concerns about financial stability, market integrity and ethics; This last part is largely a response to President Donald Trump and President Donald Trump’s various cryptocurrency-related businesses, which have increased his family’s fortunes to the tune of billions of dollars.
Although the bill is delayed, the SEC and CFTC have begun efforts to become more industry-friendly regulators anyway. The SEC released a series of staff statements and held roundtables (one of them on Monday) to discuss how securities laws could apply to various facets of cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, the CFTC has taken steps to begin allowing institutions it licenses to engage in spot cryptocurrency trading, and last week granted no-action relief to prediction market operators around certain data requirements.
Read more: US market structure bill may be postponed until January as talks continue on several points
