The Senate Banking Committee is holding its markup hearing for the Digital Assets Market Clarity Act – more commonly known as the Clarity Act – on Thursday, launching a key process for the long-awaited Market Structure bill.
During Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s 24 senators will debate and vote on dozens of proposed amendments to the text published after midnight Tuesday morning. Ultimately, lawmakers will vote on whether or not to bring the bill to the Senate as a whole.
The bill still has a long way to go before becoming law; If the Banking Committee advances the bill, it will have to be merged with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version of the legislation, debated and voted on in the Senate, reconciled with the House version of the bill, and voted on in that chamber of Congress before it can be sent to the President’s desk.
Lawmakers moved forward Thursday’s vote after reaching a compromise on stable coin yields that they deemed acceptable. Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) negotiated the agreement and circulated the text earlier this month. Outstanding questions include whether the bill will eventually include an ethics provision prohibiting high-ranking officials from having business ties to the crypto industry. According to a survey commissioned by CoinDesk, 73% of Americans believe that senior government officials should not have business ties to the industry, referring to senior government officials in general. The impetus for including such a provision in the bill is due to President Donald Trump and his family’s ties to World Liberty Financial and other cryptocurrency companies.
And although lawmakers have reached a compromise on stablecoin yield, the banking industry as a whole maintains that the stablecoin yield provisions are still too biased toward the crypto sector. State banks sent letters to lawmakers, and the bankers themselves sent some 8,000 letters to senators, a close source said.
CoinDesk will cover the hearing live as lawmakers work on the hearing.
