Senate Agriculture Advances Crypto Market-Structure Markup, Links Implementation to CFTC Staffing

Lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill to restart Senate Agriculture Committee consideration of a broad market-structure bill for digital assets. The session showcased a range of competing amendments addressing ethics, payment-fee competition, protections against foreign interference and the allocation of responsibilities between the SEC, CFTC and other federal authorities. One high-profile amendment would suspend the statute’s effective date until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has at least four commissioners confirmed, an effort explicitly tied to recent CFTC departures and designed to ensure the agency has enforcement and rulemaking capacity before the law takes effect. Behind the scenes, negotiators have tamped down several potential fracturing provisions — notably a payments amendment that would have targeted card swipe fees, which a sponsor privately agreed not to force in committee after pushback from banks and retailers and intervention from White House officials seeking to avoid collateral fights. At the same time, senior Judiciary Committee members have lodged a formal objection to a developer-exemption in the companion Banking draft, arguing it raises criminal and investigatory concerns; that dispute underscores growing jurisdictional friction and complicates efforts to reconcile committee texts. The Senate Banking Committee’s draft — reported to be roughly 270 pages with more than 70 proposed changes — remains a sprawling reference point, and at least one prominent exchange has publicly withheld support for that version, prompting additional executive-branch review. Committee leaders also rescheduled Agriculture’s markup in part to avoid forecasted weather, a delay that has given negotiators extra time to line up private agreements but also extended the period of uncertainty. Conditioning the bill’s operability on agency staffing reframes the legislative trade-offs: it converts administrative bandwidth into leverage, increasing the likelihood that confirmation votes and nomination timetables will determine when, or whether, the law becomes operative. Practically, the amendment could force Senate and White House prioritization of CFTC confirmations to prevent a statutory pause, or conversely allow senators to use confirmation leverage to extract policy concessions. For market participants, the combined effect of intercommittee disputes, industry hesitancy and the staffing condition raises the odds of prolonged regulatory ambiguity that could slow product rollouts, recalibrate strategic partnerships and shift enforcement expectations. Observers expect further bargaining over tokenized securities, DeFi carve-outs, stablecoin mechanics and third-party service roles as negotiators try to translate private agreements into durable committee votes. Whether the bill emerges as a consolidated package or fragments across committees will shape the timing and clarity of any new federal regime for digital assets.