The bill on the structure of the cryptocurrency market has not seen much public movement in a month. While it is difficult to make a prediction on the bill, it is not difficult to see that time for its passage is running out.
You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter that discusses the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to register for future editions.
the narrative
This month we will not receive the bill on the structure of the crypto market. That’s not the end of the process, but we are approaching a timeline that will surely increase the amount of gray in people’s hair.
Why is it important
Much of what has happened around market structure issues (Statements by Securities and Exchange Commission staff, for example) is not a permanent guide. The SEC has time to craft rules that go through a notice and comment period, but that will take time. The market structure legislation was intended to consolidate the crypto industry’s goals and regulations into law, making it much more difficult for a future administration to undo those rules. In other words, without the Clarity Act, we may very well be having the same conversation years from now. To be clear, this is not defending this bill, as much as I would like to write about anything else. This only indicates a probable future scenario.
breaking it
Memorial Day (May 25, or just a month from now) has been considered since at least last December as a deadline for legislation to move forward if it is to have a chance of passing before the election. As we head into summer, lawmakers will leave town to campaign and won’t have time to worry about a cryptocurrency bill (or many other pieces of legislation).
Before Congress leaves, it will examine a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (House) and determine whether Kevin Warsh will become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve (Senate).
CoinDesk’s Jesse Hamilton laid out the other steps needed to get Clarity across the finish line—that is, President Donald Trump’s desk—last week.
The crypto industry desperately wants this bill; More than 100 signed an open letter last week urging a margin hearing in the Senate Banking Committee, which would be the first step toward general approval.
Still, at this point it’s unclear how close the committee is to moving forward. Stablecoin performance continues to dominate the conversation, but other outstanding issues have also not been resolved, at least publicly.
Even when these issues are resolved, the House will have to vote on the bill again.
Congressman French Hill, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, told CoinDesk earlier this month that many of the outstanding issues around stablecoin and decentralized finance sales practices had already been resolved by the House in its version of the bill, meaning the Senate should be able to find common ground.
“I think the Senate has relayed quite a bit of the House’s work on FIT21 [the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act] from the last Congress and CLARITY in this Congress,” he said. “I think that’s seen very clearly in the Senate Agriculture markup, I think it’s seen in the basic draft of many of the components of the Senate bill.”
And well, I don’t want to talk about Consensus Miami again, but we will discuss this next month. It will be a party, you should stop by.
This week
If you have any ideas or questions about what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you would like to share, feel free to email me at [email protected] or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.
You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.
See you next week!
