The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Congress to pass a comprehensive cryptocurrency market structure bill as lawmakers return from a two-week recess, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent leading the push alongside other senior officials.
The legislation aims to clarify whether digital assets should be regulated as securities or commodities, splitting oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The House passed its version of the bill, known as the CLARITY Act, last year, but the Senate has been crafting its own version.
In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, Bessent called on Congress to "finish the job" and warned that the United States could forfeit its standing as a world financial leader if it fails to establish clear rules for the cryptocurrency industry.
What the Right Is Saying
Bessent has led the administration push, arguing that Congress has spent "the better part of a half-decade" trying to pass a framework for cryptocurrency regulation.
In a post on the social platform X, Bessent wrote: "It is time for @BankingGOP to hold a markup and send the CLARITY Act to President Trump's desk. Senate time is precious, and now is the time to act."
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt, who serves as executive director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, amplified Bessent's comments with a post on X featuring a bullseye emoji.
Former AI and crypto czar David Sacks also urged the Senate to act. "Secretary Bessent is right: the time to act is now," he wrote. "I'm confident that they will. And then President Trump will sign this landmark bill into law."
Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould argued on Saturday that the United States "should not be ceding digital asset innovation to other countries due to regulatory uncertainty."
What the Left Is Saying
Senate Democrats have expressed concerns about elements of the market structure legislation, particularly regarding provisions related to stablecoin yield and issues surrounding ethics and illicit finance.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), who has been leading bipartisan negotiations with Republican Senator Thom Tillis, told The Hill that senators were "still working" on the compromise and plan to release a draft "fairly soon."
"We still have to see some movement on issues like ethics and illicit finance," Alsobrooks said, indicating that Democrats are seeking additional safeguards before supporting the bill.
The Senate Agriculture Committee advanced its portion of the bill two weeks ago but failed to secure support from Democrats on the panel, reflecting ongoing partisan divisions over the legislation.
What the Numbers Show
The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a report on Wednesday analyzing the debate over stablecoin yield that has stalled Senate negotiations.
The report found that a yield prohibition would increase bank lending by $2.1 billion, or 0.02 percent, under baseline assumptions. Under "worst-case assumptions" with expansive stablecoin growth, this figure would rise to $531 billion, or 4.4 percent.
The banking industry has pushed back on these findings. Economists from the American Bankers Association argued the report examined the wrong question, focusing on whether prohibiting yield would impact lending rather than whether allowing yield would cause deposit flight.
The Independent Community Bankers of America warned that the report downplayed risks and relied on faulty assumptions. "Failing to extend the prohibition of yield and interest on payment stablecoins would severely damage the locally based economic growth that community banks support," ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said.
Senator Alsobrooks and Senator Tillis reached a bipartisan agreement in principle last month, though banking industry sources expressed reservations about remaining loopholes they view as unworkable.
The Bottom Line
The White House push comes as Congress faces a shrinking window to pass the legislation before the end of the session. Christopher Niebuhr, a senior research analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors, said the administration appears to have gotten "the two industry parties to that point of roughly in agreement."
However, Niebuhr questioned whether the White House has sufficient leverage over the banking industry, suggesting that Senators Alsobrooks and Tillis may hold more influence. "I think if they tell the banks, 'This is this or you get nothing,' there's the potential for them to force this forward with or without banks' blessing," he said.
The administration may be "overselling how easy it will be to address the other outstanding issues," Niebuhr added, noting that technical nuances and politically sensitive matters like ethics provisions could complicate final passage.