Senator Tim Scott discussed the impact of digital asset legislation and the progress on the highly anticipated crypto market structure bill on Tuesday, revealing that a fresh draft could be ready by the end of the week.
Crypto Market Structure Bill Sees Progress
Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit 2026, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott highlighted the “powerful impact for good” that the landmark stablecoin legislation, the GENIUS Act, has already had in the market.
Scott emphasized the importance of clear legislation, noting that politicians and bureaucrats often act arbitrarily without any rules of the road. “The market structure gives us the rules of the road for what I believe is going to be the most powerful force for good for kids like me growing up in poverty in a single-parent household,” he stated.
When asked about the status of the crypto market structure bill, known as the CLARITY Act, he humorously said, “Let us pray,” before revealing that significant progress has been made over the past month, largely due to the White House’s involvement.
For context, the crypto market structure bill has been stalled for two months since the Senate Banking Committee published its draft in mid-January. The text included several controversial policies, including significant restrictions for DeFi and the payment of interest on stablecoins.
The latter has become a major point of contention between the banking and crypto industries. As reported by Bitcoinist, the banking side has criticized the GENIUS Act for loopholes that could put the financial system at risk, arguing that allowing interest payments on stablecoins could distort market dynamics.
To address this issue, banks urged lawmakers to include language in the CLARITY Act to ban yield on stablecoins from crypto exchanges, brokers, and related entities, rather than only issuers.
The Senate Banking Committee’s draft proposed that issuers offer rewards for specific actions, such as account openings and cashback. However, it also prohibited interest payments to passive token holders, which ultimately delayed the bill’s January markup session due to backlash.
After weeks of negotiation, the US President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets stepped in, holding multiple meetings to negotiate key issues that have stalled the crypto market structure bill.
“I tell you, we have made a lot of progress over the last 30 days. Thank God for the White House getting involved. Patrick Witt has been incredibly helpful,” he told the DC Blockchain Summit.
Following the recent negotiations, Scott explained, lawmakers now have a bipartisan coalition working on “the more important issues that remain undone,” but added that they are making progress “on all the other parts that we don’t hear about,” including issues related to DeFi, ethics, and Anti-Money Laundering (AML).
CLARITY Could Come Soon
Speaking about the proposed deadlines that have not been met throughout the past two months, Scott shared that he had “some artificial deadlines (...) put in place to kind of force the conversation because it had been languishing for too long.”
“We missed lots of my artificial deadlines, but I put them in place so that we would actually have the conversation and create a sense of urgency because I do believe that at some point, politics takes over everything,” he affirmed.
The senator called the stablecoin yield compromise the “largest publicly celebrated challenge” lawmakers and crypto legislation have faced, but affirmed that “big Mo’ momentum is finally on our side, and we are heading in the right direction,” with a new, amended draft for the crypto bill potentially being completed this week.
“I believe that this week we will have the first proposal in my hands to take a look at. And if that actually happens before the end of this week, and I think that it will, we’ll at least know that the sketch looks like the person. And if that’s the case, I think we’re going to be in much better shape”, he concluded.
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