Although the US government remains closed, the Senate is a hive of crypto activity this week, with Republican lawmakers now matching a planned Democratic meeting with industry executives scheduled for Wednesday.
After CEOs such as Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov meet with up to 10 Democratic senators, according to people familiar with the project, they will head to a similar meeting with those lawmakers’ Republican counterparts. The main topic of conversation is the crypto industry’s top policy priority: legislation that would establish U.S. regulation for the broader crypto industry.
The bill — known in the version already approved by the House of Representatives as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — advanced through the usual process in the Senate, where legislative efforts typically must rely on bipartisanship to clear the 60-vote threshold. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee produced a working draft, but Congress then became mired in a budget dispute that led to a government shutdown.
And perhaps most importantly, a document suggesting Democratic language on decentralized finance was leaked, sparking an outcry from industry insiders who touted it as a potential obstacle to negotiations.
So Senate Democrats and industry leaders called a meeting Wednesday to iron out the issues. And now the Republicans will have their news too. At this second meeting, Republican industry allies will likely get an indication of where CEOs have been told by Democrats to encourage progress.
Industry executives involved in these meetings are said to be executives from Kraken, Uniswap, Galaxy Digital, Solana Policy Institute and senior executives from Circle, a16z Crypto and Jito.
A prevailing sentiment among many crypto lobbyists is that it would be difficult to get the market structure bill back on track this year, and next year’s midterm elections could make any serious policy efforts difficult. Without this legislation passed, the industry is only halfway to implementing its policy goals in the United States, having celebrated a first major success with a new law to regulate stablecoin issuers.
And until Congress can reopen the doors of government, lawmakers will remain focused on the budget dispute.
When they return to their crypto work, Republican crypto allies have a significant number of like-minded Democrats ready to endorse major crypto legislation. But Democrats have raised a number of issues to work on, including consumer protections, illicit financing concerns and conflicts of interest presented by top government officials involved in the industry, including President Donald Trump.
Both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee must produce and approve the bill before it can be voted on in the full Senate. The Agriculture Committee has not yet published any draft legislation.
“Any sustainable policy must be bipartisan,” Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, said in a statement sent to CoinDesk on Monday, emphasizing that both parties must agree.
Approval in the Senate would send it to the House for a similar vote. That chamber had already overwhelmingly approved the Clarity Act, and some prominent House members argued that the Senate could avoid a lot of headaches by simply voting on the House’s Clarity Act and sending it directly to Trump.
Read more: Crypto’s half-finished legislative agenda falters as CEOs hold meeting with Democrats
