On Thursday, the US Senate Banking Committee will markup a measure that would establish guidelines for the cryptocurrency market. The members of the committee have submitted over a hundred amendments, the most of which concern software developers, stablecoins, and ethics.
Republicans are looking to make minor tweaks to the plan, but Democrats have offered dozens of modifications, according to a list acquired by Politico.
Eyes on Thursday’s Crypto Market Structure Markup
The group has been trying to address concerns about stablecoin yield, safeguards for crypto software developers, and ethical standards for months, but the precise specifics of each proposal are unclear.
As the committee prepares to markup the bill on Thursday in an effort to move it to the Senate floor, the following list provides some idea of the topics that are likely to be debated. After prominent cryptocurrency lobbyist Coinbase pulled their support for the measure in January, the Senate Banking Committee postponed a prior markup indefinitely.
In July, the House of Representatives passed a version of the bill, dubbed the CLARITY Act, with the goal of separating the ways in which US market regulators regulate cryptocurrency. Stablecoin restrictions and the question of whether government personnel should be prohibited from engaging in crypto have sparked heated debates among politicians, crypto and banking lobbyists, and others.
After months of talks, banks and crypto lobbyists were unable to reach an agreement on the most controversial element of the bill—further limits on delivering stablecoin yields.
Coin exchanges and other third-party platforms cannot provide stablecoin yields that are “functionally equivalent” to interest payments on bank deposits, according to a revised version of the law that was unveiled on Monday.
Democratic Senators Tina Smith and Jack Reed have introduced an amendment to use a “substantially similar” test instead of an “equivalence” test in order to reinforce the restriction on interest/yield.