US Senator Majority Leader John Thune reportedly said he doesn’t expect the chamber to move forward with legislation to establish digital asset market structure before April.
According to a Thursday Punchbowl News report, Thune said that the Senate planned to prioritize voting on the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require voters to provide proof of US citizenship in person to register.
The majority leader addressed reporters on Thursday saying that the bill would go to the chamber next week, adding that lawmakers would focus on the crypto market structure bill and other bipartisan bills after the SAVE America Act vote.
“Market structure is a bill that’s, I’m hoping, going to come out of the Banking Committee soon, probably not before, I would say, the April time period,” said Thune, according to Punchbowl.
The majority leader’s statement was at odds with comments from Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, who said in February that he hoped market structure would pass through Congress by April. The Senate Agriculture Committee already advanced its version of the bill, but the Senate Banking Committee postponed a January markup necessary to combine the legislation before a floor vote.
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In a separate action, the Senate voted on Thursday to include an amendment in a housing bill, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, prohibiting the US Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. If passed and signed into law, the CBDC ban would remain in effect until December 2030.
What’s at stake in the market structure bill?
The legislation, called the CLARITY Act when it passed the House of Representatives in July, is expected to give the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the financial agency overseeing derivatives and commodities, more authority in overseeing digital assets. However, many lawmakers in the Senate have been at odds with key provisions in the bill, including tokenized equities, ethics, and stablecoin yield.
Last week, US President Donald Trump accused banks of holding the bill “hostage,” in posts to social media. Although the White House has held three meetings between crypto and banking industry representatives, it was still unclear as of Thursday if policymakers had reached any kind of agreement allowing the market structure bill to advance.
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