Bessent Rebukes Crypto Opponents as Senate Hustles Toward a Digital-Assets Market Structure Law
Financial ServicesCryptocurrencyRegulatory Policy
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Senators reconvened to resume a Senate Agriculture Committee markup of a comprehensive crypto market-structure bill; lawmakers are weighing an amendment that would suspend the law’s effectiveness until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reaches a minimum number of confirmed commissioners. Committee leaders have also been managing flashpoints — including a quietly restrained payments amendment and formal Judiciary objections to a developer exemption — while intercommittee friction and industry withdrawals complicate prospects for a unified package.
Coinbase publicly withdrew support for a congressional market-structure draft, creating friction for near-term markups, but HSBC analysts say a narrower, committee-level compromise could still deliver the statutory certainty institutions seek. The White House has scheduled a targeted convening next week—organized by its digital-assets advisory council—to try to resolve a specific dispute over reward-like incentives tied to stablecoins, a move that could produce language suitable for quick committee amendments.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said stalled congressional progress has pushed the CLARITY Act’s market-structure markup into an uncertain timeline, increasing ambiguity for tokenization and stablecoin products even as crypto markets showed a short-term uptrend. The pause amplifies lobbying activity and technical fights over custody, yield-bearing stablecoins and market definitions — favoring well-resourced incumbents and pressuring product roadmaps.
Sen. Roger Marshall privately agreed to stand down on a controversial card swipe-fee amendment to avoid jeopardizing an upcoming Agriculture Committee markup of a bipartisan crypto market-structure bill. The move comes as broader intercommittee disputes — including formal objections from Judiciary members to developer-exemption language in the Banking draft and at least one major exchange withholding support — have pushed leaders to buy time and manage amendments to preserve a path forward.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse assigns roughly a 90% chance that a market-structure bill (commonly discussed as the CLARITY Act) will clear Congress by late April amid White House-led clause-level negotiations; separately, BGD Labs will stop coding for Aave after April 1 and offered a $200,000 optional retainer to support security during the transition. The report also flags a sharp rebound in Bitcoin mining difficulty, a public-company earnings and stock move tied to bitcoin exposures, congressional scrutiny of a contested national trust bank charter, and law-enforcement arrests in Malaysia linked to crypto extortion.
The administration is promoting a pro‑crypto agenda—highlighting stablecoin legislation and coordinated SEC–CFTC work—to assert U.S. leadership in digital assets. But persistent prosecutions of protocol authors, intercommittee objections to developer exemptions and a pulled markup on key bills have created a gap between policy intent and enforcement reality that may push builders and capital abroad.
Bitwise says the Clarity Act's stalled committee markup has turned an expected regulatory milestone into an open-ended negotiation, placing U.S. crypto at an inflection point with roughly three years to prove real‑world utility before policy risks harden. While product demand — including repeated net inflows to U.S. spot‑Bitcoin ETFs and new dollar‑backed on‑chain lending venues — persists, the firm warns investors to favor liquidity and balance‑sheet strength amid an elevated probability of extended muted returns for regulation‑sensitive segments.
The White House convened senior industry and banking representatives to try to bridge a standoff over whether stablecoins should be allowed to offer yield, but negotiators left without resolving the core dispute and were pressed to deliver concrete drafting proposals within weeks. The effort comes amid wavering industry endorsements, paused committee activity and tactical bargaining over items such as conditioning the law’s effective date on CFTC staffing, all of which heighten the odds of delay absent rapid technical compromises.