The U.S. Senate Banking Committee was supposed to markup the crypto market structure bill (CLARITY Act) this week. The process has, however, been delayed after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong strongly opposed the way this bill is written. The full text of the draft market structure bill was released on Monday by the Senate Banking Committee.
Armstrong shared a detailed opinion on the draft bill in the early hours of Thursday. The Coinbase CEO said that he reviewed the proposed bill for 48 hours and decided to not support it citing an array of reasons.
He claimed out that the bill not only imposes a defacto ban on tokenized equities, but also deepens government oversight on people’s financial activities.
“There are too many issues, including the erosion of the CFTC’s authority, stifling innovation and making it subservient to the SEC,” Armstrong said. He also highlighted that the “draft amendments would kill rewards on stablecoins, allowing banks to ban their competition”.
Having no bill than a bad bill would be better, the crypto mogul noted.
Following Armstrong’s pushback, the Senate Banking Committee delayed the markup of the bill that was scheduled for Thursday. The markup session for any bill is scheduled after all hearings around it are complete and the relevant committees come together to suggest changes, if required, and vote to accept or reject the proposed changes.
Tim Scott, the Chairperson of the Senate Banking Committee has informed Washington D.C. about the delay earlier this morning. Screenshots of the correspondence have surfaced on social media that says that negotiations on the bill remain ongoing.
Source: X/ @CryptoIndia
The Senate Agriculture Committee, which is in charge of derivatives and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Senate Banking Committee, which makes rules for the SEC and other financial regulators. These are the two federal agencies working on getting this crypto market bill ready.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to sit for a markup session on this bill of January 27.
The draft bill that is up for these markups was finalized with a bipartisan support from both federal agencies. The pushback from Armstrong, however, has created the need for a reevaluation.
The crypto market structure bill presents the SEC and CFTC as the principal regulators of the U.S. crypto market. It intends to create a clear regulatory framework for the crypto sector as U.S. President Donald Trump wish to transform the country into the crypto capital of the planet.