While US Senate lawmakers have been working to pass a bill to structure the digital asset market since July, some industry observers in Washington say progress may be “stalled” due to government gridlock.
After the House of Representatives passed the CLARITY Act last summer and sent the legislation to the next chamber, lawmakers have faced a historic long government shutdown, partisan disagreements over ethics and debate over sustainable crops that have likely slowed progress on the bill, which could hamper the upcoming U.S. midterm elections in November.
Eight months before the midterms, a version of the market structure bill that focuses on commodity regulations has passed the Senate Agriculture Committee, while members of the Senate Banking Committee have yet to consider a bill on securities laws and regulations after repealing the pricing in January.
Rebecca Liao, founder and CEO of the Web3 protocol and AI Saga, and a former adviser to then-US President Joe Biden on his 2020 re-election campaign, told Cointelegraph last week that the legislation is actually “on hold.” He also pushed back against comments from Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who said in February that Congress could pass the market structure “hopefully by April,” citing a lack of steam to move the bill forward.
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“In the past, when the cryptocurrency markets were doing very well, when it seemed like every TradFi institution was developing a crypto strategy and trying to fill the core assets, there was a lot more urgency around any new legislation or new administrative policy coming out of the SEC, CFTC, etc.,” Liao said.
“But now that the markets have cooled significantly and even people inside crypto are saying, ‘We don’t know, to be honest, whether the Trump family has been a good thing for crypto or not, a lot of wind has been taken out of the sails.’
He added:
“Getting any kind of legislation through this Congress isn’t easy, and it’s even harder when it comes to a topic that most Americans honestly still think is pretty murky. And it’s an election year.”
The Stablecoin Debate, with the Trump Administration in the Middle
Further complicating the issue in the Senate is the debate over stablecoin premiums, which has resulted in three reported White House meetings between Trump officials and representatives of the crypto and banking industries. Some in the banking industry have argued that having the market structure draft include provisions that allow the payment of earnings to stablecoin holders on third-party platforms could disrupt the industry.
Crypto advocacy organization Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbon spoke to Cointelegraph after attending the World Financial Freedom Forum, where Moreno laid out his timeline on the bill. The trade group leader said the mood of some at the event, like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, was “very optimistic” about finding solutions to advance the bill, but beyond Moreno’s April target, “there weren’t a lot of specifics.”
The 2026 election season has already begun in some US states, with party nominations scheduled for Tuesday ahead of the November general elections in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas. The Senate will also likely take about a month off for a state business period in August and return two months before the election.
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