Lawmakers are preparing to try again on major crypto bill. Why it matters and what happens next

Lawmakers this week plan to revisit efforts to pass a market structure bill that will determine the crypto industry’s future in the U.S. — reviving legislative efforts that stagnated last year.

On Thursday, the Senate Agriculture and Banking Committees are expected to hold hearings on their respective parts of the crypto bill, where they might revise the text. This will lay the groundwork for establishing legislative guardrails for digital assets in the U.S. — a potential watershed moment for the crypto industry.

This is what you need to know about the market structure bill and efforts to pass it.

The so-called Clarity Act aims to provide legislative guardrails for the multitrillion-dollar crypto market and big digital asset firms — which could accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology and crypto in the U.S.

It seeks to clarify the Securities and Exchange Commission’s and Commodities Futures Trading Commission’s roles in regulating cryptocurrencies, in addition to creating more well-defined token classifications. It also aims to outline registration and compliance standards for a wide range of crypto brokerages, exchanges and other entities, enabling them to operate more easily in the U.S.

Those guardrails could help the U.S. court more digital assets companies to set up shop stateside, stimulating the economy and boosting the crypto market, according to Summer Mersinger, CEO of crypto trade group Blockchain Association.

“We’ve seen this massive movement of companies and activity back on shore because there is a friendly administration to crypto,” Mersinger said. But, without a market structure law, “that could all go away, especially if there’s a change to an unfriendly administration.”

That said, the bill’s implications for digital asset companies, crypto holders and other investors won’t be 100% clear until the draft legislation’s language is finalized. 

Lawmakers will attempt to hash out three key issues this week: stablecoin-linked rewards; the treatment of decentralized finance platforms and their developers; and the matter of blocking elected officials such as President Donald Trump from profiting off of crypto ventures. Trump-affiliated entities have launched both a memecoin and nonfungible token in the past.

The stablecoin issue is “the biggest outstanding issue” for negotiations on the Hill, said Cody Carbone, CEO of crypto trade association Digital Chamber.

“Stablecoin rewards, interest, yields, whatever you want to call it, will be addressed in the bill,” Carbone said. “Both Republicans and Democrats have come to that conclusion.”

In early January, the American Bankers Association’s Community Bankers Council wrote to Senate members, asking them to prevent stablecoin issuer affiliates from offering rewards to customers. The stablecoin products, they said, exploit a loophole in the stablecoin-centric Genius Act passed last year that prohibits dollar-pegged tokens that offer yields to holders — which pose an attractive alternative to high-yield savings accounts and other traditional products. 

On the DeFi front, crypto advocates are fighting to ensure developers do not face prosecution when their technology is used for illicit activities like money laundering.

“We’re very conscious of how illicit finance is treated in the bill… but we need to make sure that there are not obligations put on codes instead of person, or make sure that there isn’t some inadvertent way that the technology is burdened in a way that it can’t comply,” DeFi Education Fund chief legal officer Amanda Tuminelli told CNBC. 

DeFi advocates also want to ensure the market structure bill contains language allowing individuals to self-custody their crypto. In addition, they want provisions from the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act that call for software developers and blockchain service providers who do not control or custody customer funds to be exempt from registering as money-transmitting businesses. 

Finally, some lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) want to prevent public officials from profiting off of digital asset ventures while they serve.

“ It’s a really hard issue,” Mersinger said. “They ended up kind of punting [on] it in the House because it was really difficult to put on the bill. A lot of Senate Democrats have said, ‘We’re not going to punt on this issue.'” 

The Senate Agriculture and Banking Committees are expected to put out new drafts of the market structure bill, with the aim of discussing and revising details of the proposed legislation Thursday at markup, according to Mersinger. 

Later, they will join the two documents to create one big crypto bill. That draft will go to the Senate floor, where discussions could take several weeks, before potentially making its way through the rest of the lawmaking process to become law.

Crypto proponents want to see the bill passed before the 2026 midterm elections in case some of the industry’s allies are unseated in November and to avoid losing momentum on the Hill, Mersinger told CNBC. 

“There’s a lot of other priorities Congress has on the books for this year, and so this is kind of the key window that they see to get something to move out of committee onto the floor and have the time that’s needed to get it done,” Mersinger said.