The US Senate Banking Committee will no longer improve its crypto market structure bill on Thursday, after crypto exchange Coinbase publicly withdrew its support for the legislation on Wednesday and further discrepancies in the negotiation had already put it on shaky footing.
The Market Structure Bill, aimed at defining how federal regulators oversee the U.S. crypto industry, was postponed Wednesday evening and no new date has been set, according to a statement from committee Chairman Tim Scott.
“I have spoken with leaders in the crypto industry, the financial sector, and with my Democratic and Republican colleagues, and everyone remains at the table and working in good faith,” Scott said in a statement. “This bill reflects months of serious bipartisan negotiations and real input from innovators, investors, and law enforcement. The goal is to establish clear rules of conduct that protect consumers, strengthen our national security, and ensure the future of finance is built in the United States.”
Although Coinbase’s objection on the eve of the bill’s markup hearing attracted the most attention, a number of other headwinds had likely already deflected efforts. Scott was optimistic in an interview with CoinDesk on Wednesday, but he also expressed uncertainty that the many differences among negotiators could be ironed out before the committee is scheduled to meet.
On one of the central and most controversial points of the bill – authorizing stablecoin rewards programs – Wall Street bankers continued to lobby vigorously against crypto yield and convinced a number of participants from both parties that traditional banking was under threat. People in familiar conversations had said Scott couldn’t even count on a full slate of his own Republicans to support the bill.
And in another major sticking point for Democratic lawmakers, the discussions failed to consider an approach to ethics requirements that would prevent high-ranking officials from personally profiting from the crypto industry. At every turn, President Donald Trump’s White House rejected these proposals, which targeted his own family’s interests. On Wednesday, Scott told CoinDesk that it had been determined that the issue was more within the purview of the Senate Ethics Committee than that of his own banking panel.
The crypto industry has spent years of lobbying and a mountain of campaign spending to get to this point. The Senate Agriculture Committee, which also must pass a related bill before the two can be merged into a possible law, had already delayed its own increase until the end of the month, so the process could still be continued. But the Banking Committee’s work has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to finally establish crypto regulation.
In a statement, Summer Mersinger, CEO of industry lobbying group Blockchain Association, said: “The current delay of a markup represents a moment of recalibration, not an endpoint. On complex issues such as the structure of the digital asset market, moments like this can be a healthy part of policymaking, allowing time for additional deliberations and refinements.”
UPDATE (January 15, 2026, 03:56 UTC): Adds a quote from Mersinger.
