The White House appears keen to move past a dispute between the banking and crypto industries that has held up Senate negotiations on the legislation since January.
Key officials in and around the administration — from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt to former AI and crypto czar David Sacks — have called for the bill’s passage in recent days, while the Council of Economic Advisers released a report refuting the banking industry’s concerns.
But it’s unclear whether the White House push will be enough to surmount the issues plaguing the legislation, which extend beyond the narrow industry feud that has dominated discussions over the past three months.
“I think that they rightly assume from a calendar perspective that if there’s going to be an opportunity to move the market structure bill through Congress, this is that opportunity,” Christopher Niebuhr, a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors, told The Hill.
The bill, often referred to as market structure legislation, aims to split oversight of the crypto market between two financial regulators by clarifying when digital assets are considered securities or commodities.
While President Trump signed another crypto bill, the GENIUS Act, into law last July, market structure represents the crown jewel of the industry’s policy ambitions in Washington.
The GENIUS Act created a regulatory framework for a narrow category of the crypto market called stablecoins, which are digital tokens tied to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar.
The House passed its version of the market structure bill, known as the CLARITY Act, alongside the stablecoin measure last year. But the Senate has opted to craft its own legislation.
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Bessent called on Congress to “finish the job” and warned that the U.S. could forfeit its standing as a world financial leader if it fails to set clear rules for the industry.
“Congress has spent the better part of half a decade trying to pass a framework to onshore the future of finance,” he added in a post on the social platform X.
“It is time for @BankingGOP to hold a markup and send the CLARITY Act to President Trump’s desk. Senate time is precious, and now is the time to act.”
Check out the full report at TheHill.com.
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