The U.S. Senate delays voting on the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Bill until the end of January

Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: U.S. Senate delays vote on cryptocurrency bill until the end of the month Original Link: The U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee has postponed voting on a comprehensive cryptocurrency market structure bill until the last week of January. Committee Chairman John Bozeman stated that bipartisan negotiations made progress over the weekend but still require more time to finalize unresolved issues.

Bozeman said in a statement that the committee will delay analyzing the bill to ensure it garners the broad support needed for advancement. This delay leaves the negotiations hanging, and industry support still depends on how legislators handle decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin issues.

“I remain committed to advancing bipartisan legislation on the cryptocurrency market structure,” Bozeman wrote. “We have made significant progress and engaged in constructive discussions while working toward this goal.”

The committee initially planned to conduct legislative analysis on Thursday, January 15, aligning with the Banking Committee’s planned actions on market structure.

This occurred after private meetings last week between representatives of the cryptocurrency and financial sectors, discussing details of the bipartisan cryptocurrency market structure bill proposed in 2023. The bill was approved by the House of Representatives in May 2024 but has been shelved in the Senate since then.

Disagreements in the Bill

During discussions, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), an influential Wall Street business group, pressured to reduce disagreements within the Senate cryptocurrency market structure bill, while cryptocurrency policy advocates sought to ease SIFMA’s demands.

Sources familiar with the matter said that how DeFi is handled and the issues surrounding yield-generating stablecoins are among the topics still under debate.

In the cryptocurrency space, DeFi refers to blockchain-based applications that allow users to trade, lend, or manage assets directly through software, without the need for banks or brokers holding customer funds.

The political controversy centers on whether developers of these systems should be subject to the same regulatory obligations as financial intermediaries, given that they do not control user assets.

Yield-generating stablecoins are tokens pegged to the US dollar that offer returns to holders, typically by sharing interest earned on reserves.

While the stablecoin regulations established last year set basic rules for issuing stablecoins, they left unresolved questions about these yield-generating models and how DeFi software should be handled, pushing unresolved issues into the current debate on market structure.