Enough U.S. Senate Democrats are still showing they’re willing to approve a crypto market structure bill that the effort has weight, they expressed Wednesday during a meeting with several crypto CEOs that focused on the path forward on U.S. crypto regulation.
Digital asset industry executives had two meetings scheduled for the same day, the first to discuss next steps with Democrats, whose votes will be needed to advance any bill beyond the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. The second meeting took place with the Republican counterparts of these legislators, who championed a bill that constitutes their response to the Digital Assets Market Clarity Act from the House of Representatives.
“It is clear that there is a sufficient level of Democratic support,” Sergey Nazarov, CEO and co-founder of Chainlink, said in a statement to CoinDesk between meetings. He added that more than 10 lawmakers were in attendance, “all very committed to investing their time and effort to make this bill a success.”
Tension has risen across party lines and within crypto circles as the chances of winning Senate bandwidth dwindle for 2025. When some Democratic legislative proposals on decentralized finance (DeFi) recently leaked, many in the industry saw the ideas as a death blow to negotiations over market structure. Some of them made these opinions public.
The Democrats’ meeting was marked by harsh language regarding that tension, attendees said, but the policy gaps are probably not insurmountable.
“I think the frictions are transitory and will resolve themselves soon,” Nazarov said.
Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Institute, told CoinDesk in an interview that the meetings “reset the conversation,” but she said “we have work to do” when it comes to getting lawmakers’ knowledge level to where it needs to be to draft legislation.
The meeting between industry leaders and Democratic lawmakers was reportedly led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who has for years advocated for proper crypto regulation. Democrats have shown great interest in addressing illicit financing issues in legislation, Nazarov said.
After the Republican meeting, a spokesperson for Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, released a statement saying Scott “calls on his Democratic colleagues to immediately return to the negotiating table, engage in meaningful bipartisan discussions, and offer substantive comments on our bill.”
With both parties and the industry returning to the table this week, crypto executives are hoping this will restart the process. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who was scheduled to attend both meetings, had said in a post on social media site
After the first meeting, he again said the industry was “keeping up the pressure in Washington” to pass a bill, and he also pointed to a Stand With Crypto effort to build support for it.
However, a certain number of obstacles remain in this process. The Senate banking and agriculture committees must propose a text to the entire Senate, and the first is the only one to have so far produced a draft. And if the Senate approves a potential bill, it will have to come back to the House for a vote before it can be asked for Trump to sign it.
Votes on cryptocurrencies in Congress have been a bright spot in American political work, with huge bipartisan results for the recent bill to regulate stablecoin issuers and the House’s Clarity Act. But the legislation must be finalized before it can win a vote.
“It’s really in everyone’s interest for the bill to pass – for the digital asset community to be accepted by the U.S. government,” Nazarov said.
Although the bill is the top priority, Smith said not doing it this year wouldn’t spell disaster.
“All is not lost if we don’t get this done in the near term,” she said, citing policy work being done by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with both agencies working to write crypto policy and not waiting for new authorities from Congress. “We’re seeing real progress and real clarity that I think will ultimately be lasting.”
UPDATE (October 22, 2025, 8:12 p.m. UTC): Adds comment from Senator Tim Scott’s office.
UPDATE (October 22, 2025, 9:06 p.m. UTC): Adds comments from Kristin Smith to Solana Political Institute.
