Some US Senate Democrats in talks over crypto market structure bill requested amendments on Friday to several of their top policy requests in draft legislation proposed by Republicans in the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The draft they’re trying to replace was unveiled on Wednesday as a partisan effort without Democratic sign-off, so now lawmakers are trying to ban the president (and other government officials) from profiting from the crypto sector and demand the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fill out its list of commissioners before the digital asset rules go into effect.
The Agriculture Committee is set to hold a hearing next week that could potentially advance the bill to the overall Senate, although many close observers expect the session to be delayed due to heavy snowfall predicted in the Washington area over the weekend.
Nevertheless, the Democrats’ amendments are now on the record. For example, Senator Richard Durbin is seeking to ban bailouts of digital-asset issuers. And it is the panel’s ranking Democrat, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is calling for a more binding quorum of commissioners at the CFTC than the current draft bill and Senator Michael Bennet, who has proposed an anti-corruption effort to limit crypto involvement to senior government officials.
Republican members also advocated for change. Such as Senator Tommy Tuberville’s ban on crypto platforms affiliated with America’s foreign adversaries
The committee is about to mark up the bill, meaning amendments will be considered before a possible vote to advance the legislation. But the Senate Banking Committee must also advance its own version of the bill — a process that faced the heated debate that derailed an earlier effort at the markup.
Only after the two committees approve the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act can it head to a vote of the overall Senate.
Read more: This is why Coinbase and other companies fell out over major crypto bill