US senators have scheduled a committee review in January for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, placing the long-pending crypto market structure bill on the Senate calendar for the first time.
The markup will be made jointly by the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee. The legislation addresses how regulatory authority over digital asset markets is divided between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The bill passed the House of Representatives in July with bipartisan support. On the same day, lawmakers passed separate stablecoin legislation that has since been signed into law.
The January session follows several previous timelines for Senate consideration that were discussed but never formally scheduled. Committee placement is required before the legislation can be considered by the full Senate.
Under the bill, digital assets classified as securities would remain under the supervision of the SEC, while assets and markets classified as commodities would fall under the authority of the CFTC. The legislation introduces statutory definitions intended to reduce situations where companies are subject to overlapping regulations from both agencies.
Lawmakers backing the bill have said current law does not provide those definitions, forcing companies to navigate inconsistent regulatory treatment across agencies.
Some senators have focused their objections on the agency’s structure rather than asset classification. Those objections concern the appointment and dismissal of SEC commissioners and CFTC and the application of existing requirements for bipartisan seats in independent agencies.
White House statements about future regulatory nominations have not addressed those structural concerns. Furthermore, recent Supreme Court cases involving presidential authority over independent agencies have been cited in Senate discussions related to commissioner tenure and removal protections.
Several Democratic senators involved in negotiations over the bill have not indicated whether they will support the legislation. Their objections focus on agency governance and enforcement authority rather than the bill’s definitions of digital asset categories.
Senate aides have said there is no confirmed Democratic support beyond those discussions. Therefore, any effort to advance the bill would require additional commitments during or after committee consideration.
Opinions within the crypto industry also vary. Some companies have expressed support for clearer legal boundaries between securities and commodities regulation. Other companies have opposed the compliance, reporting and recordkeeping provisions included in the bill, arguing that those requirements would impose higher relative costs on smaller companies than on larger operators.
During the January term, committee members are expected to review the bill line by line, consider amendments and vote on whether to report the legislation to the full Senate. Amendments being discussed include jurisdictional thresholds, compliance schedules and limits on agency authority.
Committee staff have said issues related to governance and enforcement are likely to be addressed during markup rather than deferred to later stages of the legislative process.
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