The United States Capitol is shown the morning after the Senate passed legislation to reopen the federal government on November 11, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
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The Senate Agriculture Committee has released a much-anticipated bill on digital asset market structure – a crucial step toward accelerating the institutional and commercial adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Unveiled Monday by Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., the bipartisan discussion draft lays the groundwork for creating guardrails for the crypto industry in the United States. It also establishes guidelines for institutions that want to work with digital assets, from bitcoin and ether to tokenized financial instruments.
“This is the most important roadmap for how an institution is going to integrate digital assets into its business,” Cody Carbone, CEO of crypto trade association Digital Chamber, told CNBC. “It’s like the best possible step-by-step of what kind of compliance rule requirements they should be following to work with crypto.”
Here are five key takeaways from the draft discussion.
1. Grants favorable regulatory status to certain cryptocurrencies
The text classifies some of the largest digital assets by market capitalization, such as bitcoin and ether, as “digital commodities,” placing them under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
This provision removes a major barrier to digital asset adoption for institutional fiduciaries, Juan Leon, an analyst at crypto-focused asset manager Bitwise, told CNBC.
“Compliance and risk departments will finally have a federal law to refer to,” Leon said. “It changes the internal conversation… (and) it provides the legal certainty needed to move assets into formal, strategic allocation.”
This will also create “a sharply divided market” comprised of regulated and unregulated tokens, with the former asset class experiencing “a massive influx of institutional capital, significant liquidity, and a robust derivatives ecosystem.”
2. Requires crypto companies to segregate funds and manage conflicts of interest
The draft calls for crypto companies to “establish separation in governance, personnel and financial resources between affiliated entities that perform separate regulated functions.”
Bitwise’s Leon interprets this provision as a challenge to the “all-in-one” business model common among crypto exchanges. Under these models, an exchange, a broker-dealer, a custodian and a proprietary trading desk are all combined into a single entity.
In other words, according to Leon, digital asset companies could be required to separate their different businesses like traditional financial companies. The change would serve as a “fundamental pillar for institutional adoption.”
3. Gives the CFTC more power to regulate digital assets
The text gives more power to the CFTC, allowing it to work in tandem with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue common rules on crypto-related matters.
“There is a lot more power or authority delegated to the CFTC to have jurisdiction over this industry,” Carbone said.
The move comes after the SEC served for years as the primary regulator of digital assets, having moved ahead of the CFTC to gain authority over the sector.
4. Allows the CFTC to collect fees
The draft calls for regulated entities to pay fees to the CFTC. These fees would be for the registration of digital commodity exchanges, brokers and dealers, in addition to monitoring regulated entities and education and awareness.
5. Establishes listing standards for tokens
The text calls for crypto exchanges to only allow trading in digital products that are “not easily susceptible to manipulation.”
This is a provision that could reduce the number of rug pulls and other scams still common in parts of the crypto industry, with the aim of setting standards and building trust in the market.
What’s next?
The Senate Agriculture Committee’s discussion draft is far from final, but it offers key insights into the direction of efforts to pass crypto-friendly regulations in the United States, according to Carbone.
“It’s not final, it’s not done, but it gives a good idea of where Congress is going and what the final rules might be,” Carbone said.
The committee will likely spend the next few weeks gathering feedback on its draft, meaning it could be “nearly impossible to finalize (a final version of this part of the bill) by the end of the year,” he added.
However, this period will give lawmakers time to offer more concrete guidance on several issues that are bracketed – or not yet finalized – in the discussion draft. These include provisions on anti-money laundering rules and regulations specific to decentralized finance players.
Several crypto players plan to work in tandem with lawmakers to help iron out these and other details.
“We have long said that crypto is a bipartisan issue, and this plan from Chairman Boozman and Senator Booker reflects that,” Moonpay President Keith Grossman told CNBC. “It is essential that the legislation distinguishes between centralized intermediaries and decentralized systems, and we look forward to working with the Committee to achieve this.”
According to Carbone, the discussion draft is just one piece of larger legislative efforts to overhaul crypto industry regulation. Ultimately, the text will be combined with the Senate Banking Committee’s draft on the structure of the digital asset market with the aim of creating a comprehensive bill.
And while lawmakers are far from reaching the finish line of this process, crypto companies are finding other ways to work with regulators and other authorities to meaningfully advance their industry, Craig Salm, chief legal officer of Grayscale Investments, told CNBC.
“In the absence of comprehensive legislation, we have still seen significant progress on the regulatory front,” Salm said, adding that the SEC, Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department have recently provided guidance regarding investing in exchange-traded crypto products. “That said, thoughtful legislation will be key to solidifying the foundation of the U.S. digital assets industry and unlocking even greater value for investors and consumers.”
