While the U.S. government remains shut down, the Senate has seen an uptick in crypto-related activity this week, with Republican lawmakers scheduled to meet Democrats with industry leaders on Wednesday.
CEOs such as Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov will meet with up to 10 Democratic senators before jumping into similar talks with their Republican counterparts, according to people familiar with the plan. The main topic of conversation is a bill that would establish U.S. regulation of the broader crypto sector, a top policy priority for the crypto industry.
The bill (known as the Digital Asset Market Transparency Act in the already-approved House version) is moving through the normal process in the Senate, where legislative efforts typically have to rely on bipartisan cooperation to clear the 60-vote threshold. Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee drafted it, but Congress then became embroiled in a budget dispute that shut down the government.
And perhaps more importantly, a leaked document showing suggestive Democratic language on decentralized finance has sparked an uproar from industry insiders who say it could be a deal-breaker.
So Senate Democrats and industry leaders set a meeting for Wednesday to resolve the issue. And now Republicans will be listening to them, too. At that second meeting, Republican allies in the industry will learn where CEOs have been told by Democrats they are encouraging progress.
Industry leaders attending these meetings are said to include heads of Kraken, Uniswap, Galaxy Digital, Solana Policy Institute, and senior executives from Circle, a16z Crypto, and Jito.
The general consensus among many crypto lobbyists is that it will be difficult to get market structure legislation back on track this year, and that next year’s midterm elections could complicate serious policy efforts. If the bill fails to pass, the sector, which had its first major success with a new law regulating stablecoin issuers, will be only halfway through enacting policy goals in the United States.
And until Congress can reopen the government’s doors, lawmakers’ main focus remains on the budget debate.
When they return to their crypto work, crypto allies in the Republican Party will have a significant number of like-minded Democrats across the aisle who are prepared to approve major crypto legislation. But Democrats had raised a number of issues that needed to be addressed, including consumer protections, concerns about illegal financing, and conflicts of interest posed by government officials involved in the industry, especially President Donald Trump.
Both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee must author and approve the bill before it can be voted on by the full Senate. The Agriculture Committee has not yet released the bill.
“Permanent policy must be bipartisan,” Blockchain Association CEO Summer Marsinger said in a statement to CoinDesk on Monday, emphasizing the need for both parties to work together.
If approved by the Senate, it would go to the House for a similar vote. The chamber has already overwhelmingly approved the Transparency Act, and some House leaders argue that the Senate could avoid many headaches by simply voting on the House Transparency Act and sending it directly to President Trump.
Read more: Crypto’s half-baked legislative agenda teeters as CEO sets meeting with Democrats
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