Ahead of a key vote in the Senate Banking Committee on a crypto market structure bill tentatively scheduled for next week, rival stakeholders met Thursday to try to iron out their differences to allow the bill to pass. Sources involved in the talks says Decrypt The meeting gave glimmers of “progress” toward compromise on the issue of decentralized finance, or defi, referring to crypto-native platforms that allow direct trading of assets without an intermediary.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) opposed the bill’s regulatory exclusions for defi services and developers. But a source described Thursday’s discussions as “constructive” and “productive” on the issue of the challenge.
Crypto industry executives attending the meeting, including an executive from venture capital giant Andreesen Horowitz and a representative from the DeFi Education Fund, sought to persuade SIFMA to drop or moderate its opposition to the exclusions, which were agreed to by some pro-crypto senators on both sides of the aisle, according to Decrypt. On Thursday, more than 50 members of the trade association Digital Chamber met with senators and White House officials to lobby for retaining pro-challenge language in the bill.
Another contentious issue in the discussion is the push by banking industry groups to retroactively close what they perceive as a loophole in the GENIUS Act passed last year that allows dollar-pegged stablecoin issuers to circumvent the law’s ban on paying interest or other incentives to coin holders.
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A SIFMA spokesperson says Decrypt the association has not “taken a position on the yield-bearing stablecoin”. But earlier in the week, the American Banking Association wrote to the committee reiterating his plea To close the loophole, he says, depositors will flee traditional financial institutions in favor of higher-yielding stablecoins.
The Market Structure Bill accompanies the Clarity Act passed by the House last year. But it faced opposition in the Senate, mainly on partisan grounds. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), ranking member of the Banking Committee, objected to what she sees as insufficient consumer and investor protections in the measure and joined other Democrats demanding limits on crypto transactions from the Trump family and members of the Trump administration.
Most stakeholders agree that bipartisan support for the measure in the Banking Committee is essential for the measure to have a chance of moving to the Senate for a vote by the full chamber. But even then, differences between the Senate bill and the Clarity Act would need to be ironed out before a bill can reach the president’s desk.
Committee Chairman Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) scheduled the vote for Jan. 15, putting pressure on negotiators to quickly iron out their differences and angering some stakeholders who fear the accelerated timetable could derail negotiations.
“I just can’t believe that Democrats and Republicans are finally proactively working on something and we’re potentially going to compromise it for an arbitrary timeline,” an inside source told Decrypt.
