Senate Banking Committee Sets Key Market Structure Hearing for Thursday
The Senate Banking Committee has officially set May 14 at 10:30 a.m. as the date for its long-awaited Digital Asset Market Clarity Act markup hearing, bringing the landmark crypto market structure bill one critical step closer to becoming law after months of stalls and negotiations.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act markup, also known as the Clarity Act, had been frozen since January, with disagreements over stablecoin yield emerging as the central sticking point holding the bill back. That deadlock now appears to have cracked.
Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks reached a bipartisan compromise on May 1, releasing language that bars crypto firms from paying interest or yield on stablecoin balances in a manner economically or functionally equivalent to a bank deposit, while still allowing activity-based rewards tied to real participation on crypto platforms. Major industry players moved quickly to back the deal. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted “Mark it up” on social media after the text dropped, and Circle Chief Strategy Officer Dante Disparte called it “meaningful progress.”
The path forward is not entirely smooth, however. A coalition of major banking trade groups, including the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, and the Consumer Bankers Association, pushed back hard, arguing that the current text of Section 404 is still riddled with loopholes that allow digital asset intermediaries to distribute rewards in ways that functionally rival traditional bank deposits.
Politics are adding another layer of complexity to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act markup. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime champion of the crypto industry, has insisted the bill must include an ethics provision barring senior government officials from profiting off the crypto industry while regulating it, a demand backed by polling that found 73% of registered U.S. voters share that concern. Whether that language makes it into the Senate Banking version remains uncertain.
Committee Chairman Tim Scott is aiming to complete the markup before May 21, the start of the Memorial Day recess, while the White House has set its sights on a July 4 signing, America’s 250th anniversary, as a symbolic deadline.
The bill previously passed the full House in July 2025 with a strong bipartisan vote of 294 to 134 before stalling in the Senate for months. Even after the Banking Committee’s markup clears, the Senate will need to merge this version with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version before the full Senate can vote to advance the bill.
The clock is ticking, and Washington’s crypto reckoning is now a matter of days, not months.
