Senate Sets Dueling Markups for High-Stakes Crypto Market Regulation

This January is crunch time for the Senate on cryptocurrency market regulation efforts.

After years of fits and starts on Capitol Hill, including key wins like the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, two Senate committees have now scheduled simultaneous markup sessions for draft legislation on crypto markets for next Thursday (Jan. 15).

The two separate but interlocking hearings include markup sessions in the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Both committees must advance versions of the crypto market structure bill before a unified text can even reach the Senate floor.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has publicly set his sights on a markup, signaling an aggressive push to force resolution of issues that have previously stalled negotiations.

“My understanding is that the chairman is going to have a vote, come hell or high water, on Thursday for the next week,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) in a statement.

Meanwhile, the Agriculture Committee is expected to hold its own markup on the same day, a signal that leadership wants to synchronize both sides of the regulatory divide.

Officially, neither committee has released a finalized legislative text ahead of their sessions, raising questions about whether members will vote on updated drafts or older placeholder language.

Read more: Compliance Is Crypto’s New Cost of Doing Business

Liquidity, Cash Management and the Stablecoin Question

At its core, the market structure legislation seeks to answer one foundational question: How should digital assets be regulated in the United States? Current law splits oversight between the SEC (for securities) and the CFTC (for commodities), but the rapid growth of tokenized markets, decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoins has blurred these categories in ways regulators never anticipated.

If both the Agriculture and Banking committees advance versions of the market structure bill that can be reconciled, the Senate could consider a formal floor vote within weeks. Should both chambers agree on identical language, the legislation would head to the president’s desk for signature.

But if committee members cannot agree, whether due to unresolved issues like DeFi liability, yield mechanics, or jurisdictional splits, the bill could stall or be substantially rewritten in subsequent months.

For pure crypto firms, the markup offers both peril and promise. A clear federal framework could unlock vast flows of institutional capital and legitimized market infrastructure. But heavy regulatory burdens could also impose compliance costs that favor larger incumbents over nimble startups.

The treatment of DeFi remains especially uncertain. Proponents argue that decentralized protocols offer efficiency, transparency, and competition to legacy systems. Skeptics within both regulatory agencies and financial institutions warn that DeFi’s code-driven models challenge core investor protection and market integrity norms.

And while the signed-into-law GENIUS Act established baseline rules for stablecoins last year, a major regulatory flash point remains unresolved: whether crypto firms can offer yield-like rewards on stablecoin holdings. Traditional banks argue that such yield mechanisms siphon deposits from community banking markets and create unfair competition.

Cryptocurrency firms counter that yield incentives are essential to liquidity and user adoption, and that banning them outright would stifle innovation in DeFi and related markets. This standoff has emerged as one of the most potentially disruptive tradeoffs in the markup process.

Should the bill include a strong prohibition on yield, it could appease banking interests but risk alienating segments of the crypto sector. Conversely, if markup language fails to address the issue robustly, opposition from banking lobbies may make bipartisan consensus harder to reach.

Read also: Conditional Charters Pull Crypto Closer to Core of US Banking

Why Crypto Market Structure Matters to Finance Teams

For years, cryptocurrency exposure at most large companies has been either tactical (payments experiments, pilot programs) or passive (holding digital assets received through operations). Regulatory uncertainty especially around custody, asset classification, and counterparty risk has made anything more ambitious difficult to justify to boards and auditors.

For chief financial officers (CFOs) and treasury leaders, the legislation under review could redefine how companies manage liquidity, deploy cash, hedge risk and interact with financial infrastructure over the next decade.

The market structure bill would establish registration regimes and compliance standards for digital asset intermediaries, potentially bringing crypto custody closer to the regulatory expectations CFOs already apply to banks, brokers and clearinghouses.

Goldman Sachs, for example, reportedly  sees more cryptocurrency adoption happening as regulations improve and new usages emerge.

For finance leaders, the key issue is predictability. Treasury teams need to know which rules apply before committing resources, integrating systems, or approving new financial instruments. Fragmented oversight increases compliance risk and discourages adoption.