Senate Banking Committee plans to hold key market structure hearing on Thursday

The Senate Banking Committee announced it would hold its markup hearing for the Clarity Act on March 14.

What to know:

• The Senate Banking Committee said it would hold its markup hearing for the Clarity Act on Thursday, May 14.
• The market structure bill had been in limbo since January, with issues like stablecoin yield holding up the bill's advancement. Lawmakers seem ready to move on with a compromise brokered by Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks, though banking industry groups said they still have concerns with the language.
• The markup is a key step toward the bill becoming law, though other hurdles remain.

The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold its long-awaited markup hearing for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (otherwise known as the Clarity Act) on Thursday, May 14 at 10:30 a.m.

The Clarity Act was largely in limbo after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced the exchange was pulling its support over stablecoin yield and other provisions in January. Last week, Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks released a compromise text addressing yield, which would prohibit crypto companies from offering yield on static stablecoin reserve holdings but allowing rewards for stablecoins involved in activities, seemingly resolving one of the key issues blocking the bill from advancing.

The committee did not release the full text of the updated bill publicly as of press time.

The banking industry groups said they had issues with this compromise text and would provide feedback. A letter published by multiple banking trade associations, including the American Bankers Association, Bank Policy Institute, Independent Community Bankers of America, National Bankers Association and Consumer Bankers Association on Friday said "additional work is needed to arrive at text that embraces the innovation represented by digital assets while also protecting consumers."

The letter includes recommendations with specific edits to the text of the provision released last week.

The scheduling of a markup hearing suggests lawmakers are ready to move ahead with the current version of the text regardless of these concerns.

There are still other outstanding issues — Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime champion of the crypto industry, told the audience at Consensus Miami this past week that the Clarity Act needs an ethics provision barring senior government officials from profiting off of the crypto industry while regulating it. Her office reiterated that position in a press release on Thursday, which cited CoinDesk-commissioned polling data which found that 73% of registered U.S. voters believe senior government officials should not have business ties to the industry.

However, this issue may not be addressed in the Senate Banking version of the bill; after the Banking markup, the Senate will need to merge this version of the bill with the Senate Agriculture Committee's version before the overall Senate can vote to advance the bill.

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