Some crypto executives met with key lawmakers on Wednesday as the US Senate is set to take a break from negotiations on a crypto market structure bill – the industry’s most important policy goal.
“This was a bipartisan show of interest and forward momentum,” said Kara Calvert, Coinbase vice president for U.S. policy, who spoke with CoinDesk after attending the meeting. She described the feeling in the room as follows: “We are going to reach a markup and we need to find areas of compromise to get there.”
Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee that took the lead in advancing the bill, hosted the meeting with several insiders and advocacy groups as lawmakers continue to negotiate several details of the bill. This latest gathering included Coinbase and other crypto-connected companies, such as Kraken, Ripple, a16z and Chainlink, in addition to industry advocacy groups such as Blockchain Association, the Digital Chamber and DeFi Education Fund, as well as Democratic lawmakers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., BNY and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
In a statement, Scott said senators were “working on the text in a thoughtful and deliberate manner.”
Participants told CoinDesk that this is a last chance in 2025 to clarify positions, such as DeFi’s defense of software developers. Nothing new was resolved, they said, but it set the stage for the next negotiations in January.
Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, described the meeting in a Wednesday memo: “While there are still several important policy questions to resolve, we are optimistic that these hurdles can be overcome as Senate leaders, who took the time to meet with us today before leaving Washington for the holidays, are committed to finding common ground to define the rules of the road for digital assets in the United States,” he said.
Many of these same executives have visited Capitol Hill offices regularly in recent weeks, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have struggled to find common ground on a market structure bill that could follow up on successful efforts earlier this year to pass a law governing stablecoin issuers in the United States.
While the industry held out hope for more concrete action on legislation this year, such as the creation of a committee within the Banking Committee or the Senate Agriculture Committee that must also approve a bill, the end-of-year target has now been pushed back to January. That comes with potential complications, such as the budget deadline at the end of next month, during which Congress must return to the drama of negotiations over federal spending plans that has already imposed a weeks-long government shutdown this year.
Discussions have so far been on hold on issues including the treatment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Democrats’ proposal to ban senior officials from any personal business ties with the industry, primarily aimed at President Donald Trump.
Read more: US Senate Crypto Market Structure Bill Gets Complicated as Timeline Grows
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 6:55 p.m. UTC): Adds comments from meeting participants.
UPDATE (December 17, 2025, 8:02 p.m. UTC): Adds a comment from Senator Tim Scott.
