State of Crypto: What Congress Has Left to Do This Year

The restarted Senate is moving forward with certain crypto initiatives, but how much time is left compared to how much work is left, really?

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Now that Congress is back from the government shutdown, all eyes are on how it will proceed on crypto issues. There are a few components to this: Mike Selig’s nomination to run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, market structure legislation and other crypto matters.

Time is starting to run out for the crypto industry to lock in its wins from the 2024 election. While the GENIUS Act was a strong start for crypto businesses, and the Securities and Exchange Commission and CFTC are continuing their efforts to create new rules for the industry, the market structure bill is still far from completion. Congress has less than 40 days left this year and just a handful of months next year before it disperses for the midterm elections.

The Senate Agriculture Committee voted 13-11 to advance CFTC Chair nominee Mike Selig’s name to the full Senate for a floor vote; if he secures a majority of votes, he should get sworn in shortly after. This may happen in the coming weeks.

Selig said crypto is an important issue for the CFTC to look into, speaking to specific issues like onchain markets and the role of intermediaries, among other things.

“The CFTC has a critical mission to protect these markets,” he said at his hearing on Wednesday. “This is a real opportunity to develop a framework that can allow for software developers to thrive, for new exchanges to crop up that are going to protect investors and have the types of controls that you would expect in an exchange and make sure that we have the right disclosure requirements that we have typically in our financial markets.”

The Senate Banking Committee also advanced the nomination of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Acting Chair Travis Hill to be the regulator’s fully confirmed chair to the Senate, among other nominees.

But the main event — market structure legislation — remains largely in the same public position it was in last week.

As noted last week, the Agriculture Committee’s new draft includes a few provisions that may prove controversial, including one touching on conflicts of interest. This discussion draft will clearly see updates before the committee can hold a markup and vote. The Trump family’s various crypto businesses are unlikely to leave Democrats’ focus either — Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General for information about allegations that the Trump-linked World Liberty Financial sold some of its tokens to “illicit actors,” including in sanctioned regions.

The Banking Committee may be closer to a markup — while the committee hasn’t published a revised draft bill in a while, negotiations do appear to be ongoing between Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. Tim Scott, who chairs the Banking Committee, said Democrats had been “stalling” the bill’s progress in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo earlier this week.

“The Democrats have been stalling and stalling and stalling because they don’t want President Trump to make America the crypto capital of the world,” he said. “They don’t want to give them the win. It’s not just for President Trump. It’s for the American people, single moms like the one that raised me.”

Still, he said the bill might still get to the Senate floor in early 2026.

“Next month, we believe we can mark up in both committees and get this to the floor of the Senate early next year, so that President Trump will sign the legislation making America the crypto capital of the World, protecting consumers while increasing the likelihood of America being the most dominant economic power for the next 100 years,” Scott said.

Congress has a limited amount of time left in the year to get anything done — lawmakers will be out of session next week for Thanksgiving, and will have just a few weeks in December before Christmas and New Year’s.

• It’s the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. Congress will be back next week.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at [email protected] or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

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See ya’ll next week!