Crypto Industry Leaders Discuss Market Structure Bill With Lawmakers

Cryptocurrency industry leaders and lobbyists are reportedly meeting with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and other lawmakers Wednesday (Dec. 17) to discuss the crypto market structure bill.

Scott and the Senate Banking Committee, of which he is chairman, have taken the lead in trying to advance the bill, and the meeting Scott is hosting is meant to negotiate some details of the bill, CoinDesk reported Wednesday.

The bill’s progress has been stalled by disagreements among lawmakers over the treatment of decentralized finance and a proposal to bar senior government officials from maintaining personal business ties with the crypto industry, according to the report.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, called Tuesday (Dec. 16) for the Department of the Treasury and the Department of Justice to investigate national security risks posed by decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

Warren did so in a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pamela Bondi, according to a Tuesday press release. In the letter, she raised concerns that DeFi exchange platforms “lack national security safeguards” and about how “criminals could exploit DeFi exchanges to fund their illicit activities,” according to the release.

“As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation—including rules to prevent terrorists, criminals and rogue states from exploiting decentralized finance (DeFi) to fund their activities—it is critical to understand whether you are seriously investigating these risks,” Warren wrote in the letter to Bessent and Bondi.

It was reported Dec. 10 that the odds of Senate passage of crypto market structure legislation were growing longer as opposition to the bill developed on Capitol Hill and among influential constituencies.

Speaking at the Blockchain Association’s annual policy summit in Washington, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, one of his party’s lead negotiators on the bill, said growing frustration with President Donald Trump’s refusal to appoint any Democrats to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission could derail passage of the measure.

On Oct. 23, it was reported that crypto executives held separate sit-downs with Republican and Democratic senators and got a mixed message from Capitol Hill on passage of a market structure bill.