Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry has delayed a planned markup of sweeping crypto market structure legislation to the last week of January with Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) saying bipartisan talks had progressed over the past weekend but still needed more time to finalize outstanding issues before the bill could advance ahead.
A statement released Monday reportedly said Boozman’s committee “would delay consideration of the bill to ensure it receives the broad support needed to move forward with its motion.”
A delay now leaves the outcome of those negotiations unresolved; industry support remains largely dependent on how lawmakers ultimately address DeFi and stablecoins as the bill moves to a new markup later this month, and an attempt by Republicans at Senate bipartisan support is still being considered.
He wrote, “I remain committed to advancing bipartisan crypto market structure legislation. It is a goal we have made good progress, and had positive discussions as we work towards this objective. Paraphrast.
It was originally scheduled to mark the legislation on Thursday, January 15, by the committee in line with the Banking Committee’s planned action on market structure.
The public meeting of stakeholders across the crypto and financial industries last week is a private discussion of details about the bill, which was introduced in 2023 by partisan House lawmakers. In May 2024, it passed the House but stalled in the Senate that year.
While in debates, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), a leading Wall Street trade group, was trying hard to settle on narrow disagreement with the Senate’s crypto market-structure bill, while crypto policy advocates sought to moderate SIF MA requests.
Those issues that were still under discussion were the treatment of decentralized finance and questions around yield-bearing stablecoins, according to sources familiar with the meeting previously told Decrypt.
decentral financial (DFI) is the application of blockchain-based applications that allow users to trade, lend or manage assets directly through software without a bank or broker holding customer funds in crypto.
When it does not control user assets, the policy dispute revolves around whether developers of these systems should be subject to the same regulatory obligations as financial intermediaries when they do not manage user asset.
Yield-bearing stablecoins are dollar-pegged tokens that offer returns to holders, typically by sharing interest earned on reserves.
Although Trump’s GENIUS Act established foundational guidelines for theissuance of stablecoin last year, it left open how to implement these yield-generating models and DeFi software as well as pushing unresolved questions into the current market structure debate.
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