US Senate negotiations on a crypto market structure bill, the industry’s main target in its political lobbying, have yet to resolve several disagreements as talks approach the holidays, suggesting that real progress may not occur before January.
The legislative text has been circulating privately among industry experts, and executives reviewed part of the current draft at a meeting at the White House on Thursday, according to people familiar with the process. The pages were shown very briefly at a meeting led by President Donald Trump’s crypto adviser Patrick Witt, they said, although industry representatives have not given the approach a seal of approval.
Up to four important points remain to be resolved if Democrats are to be convinced to join forces with Republicans on the bill. What amounts to a four-way negotiation involving Senate Democrats, Republicans, the White House, and the crypto industry has failed to reach agreement on items such as ethical rules for government officials’ involvement with digital assets (most significantly, President Donald Trump), whether stablecoins should be linked to performance, and what powers the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can be given to decide which tokens it governs, and the treatment of decentralized finance. (DeFi).
The White House has already rejected negotiators’ arguments about Democrats’ ethical approach, which would prohibit top government officials from squeezing profits from crypto interests, as seen with Trump and his family businesses. And the crypto industry has drawn certain red lines around the freedoms under which DeFi should be allowed to operate.
Witt noted in a post on social media site X that the White House and Senate Republicans “are in unison on the need to protect software and DeFi developers.”
Despite the split over certain negotiating positions, the pace and intensity of negotiations remain as high as ever in the Senate, giving lobbyists hope that the legislation can advance toward a formal committee in the coming weeks.
“I have never been so optimistic, and I have never seen both sides so eager to sit down at the negotiating table or the negotiating table and move papers back and forth,” said Cody Carbone, executive director of the Digital Chamber, one of the leading cryptocurrency advocacy groups in Washington. “There is a real desire and drive from everyone involved to achieve this.”
Completing such a bill would finally establish the United States’ positions on defining crypto tokens, setting rules for how markets will operate, and determining which agencies have authority over which activity. Meanwhile, the regulators who would implement it are moving forward on their own to try to establish some of those points through statements, guidance and proposed rules, although they generally recognize that a comprehensive crypto law is the best path to making the system durable.
But the Senate has limited bandwidth and has only a few work days left this year. Lawmakers who had personally spent time at the negotiating table retreated to their states over the weekend, although their staff may still be in talks. While the public appearance of incomplete legislative language is still possible at any time, crypto experts have already begun to rule out January possibilities.
If potential markups on the Senate Banking Committee and Agriculture Committee hold through the first weeks of 2026, that could still preempt another potential late-January budget battle like the one that recently shut down the federal government for several weeks.
“Negotiations are still underway, but if we look realistically at the calendar, there are only a few days left,” Carbone told CoinDesk. “So it’s not a sign that momentum is changing that these talks are moving to January. Progress is still happening, and I would expect real movement early in the new calendar.”
