Senate Democrats Lay Out Their Terms For Supporting a Crypto Market-Structure Bill

Under Senate rules, the votes of at least seven Democrats will be needed to break a likely filibuster of the bill.

While the letter highlights seven “principles for a digital asset regulatory framework,” it reserves its most pointed language for a demand to restore Democrats to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, both of which have been stripped of opposition voices by President Trump.

“Designing and enforcing a digital asset framework will require significant additional resources for the SEC, CFTC, and the Treasury Department,” the letter said. “In addition, President Trump has fired countless Democratic commissioners from independent regulatory agencies and shown little interest in nominating new officials. For digital assets regulation to succeed, it is essential that regulators have the funding and staff that they need.”

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By law, regulatory commissions like the SEC and CFTC are required to have five members, no more than three of whom can be from the same political party. Traditionally, presidents have appointed two commissioners from the opposition party, typically after soliciting input from the party’s leadership. Trump, however, has ignored that requirement and tradition, summarily dismissing Democrats from regulatory agency boards and commissions and decline to fill the vacancies.

There is currently only one, term-limited Democrat on the SEC, and none on the CFTC, which is currently operating under a single Republican, acting chair Caroline Pham.

Read more: Senate Edges Forward on Market Structure Bill for Crypto

Other key asks in the letter include “closing the gap in the spot market” by giving CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital assets that are not securities; incorporating digital asset platforms into the regulatory structure by requiring the SEC to promptly make rules to bring platforms under the same regulatory umbrella as exchanges, brokers, and securities markets; preventing illicit finance by requiring digital asset platforms to register with FinCEN as “financial institutions”; and preventing corruption by limiting elected officials and their families from “issuing, endorsing, or profiting from digital assets while in office.”

That last demand is prompted by Democratic criticism of Trump and his family’s extensive and highly lucrative crypto dealings, many of which, Democrats claim, create serious conflicts of interest.

The letter also seeks to slow the crypto train currently rolling through Capitol Hill. Both the House and the Senate passed the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act earlier this year, for which five of the six signatories to the letter voted in favor. The House also passed the market-structure CLARITY Act. Meanwhile, the SEC and CFTC have moved aggressively to enable crypto trading at the urging of the While House.

As reflected in the letter, however, Senate Democrats are now looking to tap the brakes. “The framework is a substantive road map to guide what we hope will be robust and fruitful bipartisan negotiations and ultimately, a bipartisan product,” the signatories said in a statement accompanying the letter’s release. “Achieving a strong, bipartisan outcome will require time and cannot be rushed. We look forward to working on this with our Republican colleagues.”