The amendments marked the latest Democratic Party-driven push to prevent US officials from profiting off of crypto interests.
The amendments marked the latest Democratic Party-driven push to prevent US officials from profiting off of crypto interests.
US Democratic Senators working on crypto market structure legislation filed several amendments on Friday, including measures to address conflicts of interest with US officials profiting from the crypto industry.
The ethics-focused amendments were filed ahead of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s markup for the crypto market structure legislation this Tuesday, which seeks to give greater clarity on federal rules for digital assets, define agency oversight, and bring regulatory certainty to investors and market participants.
One of the most notable amendments was Senator Michael Bennet’s purported inclusion of the Digital Asset Ethics Act into the crypto market structure legislation to prevent US officials from profiting from the crypto industry.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats have been raising concerns about President Donald Trump’s alleged conflicts of interest with the crypto industry, including his involvement in the World Liberty Financial crypto platform, which has increased his net worth by hundreds of millions of dollars.
CFTC should fill vacant seats before bill takes effect
Another amendment from Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar seeks to delay the bill’s implementation until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has a full set of commissioners.
The CFTC is currently led solely by Chair Michael Selig, who was sworn in on Dec. 22. There is no concrete timeline for when the remaining four commissioner seats are expected to be filled.
Senators Roger Marshall, Dick Durbin, and Peter Welch also made amendments to include the Credit Card Competition Act, which seeks to prohibit “credit card networks and certain card-issuing financial institutions from requiring network exclusivity on credit cards.”
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The Senate markup for Tuesday comes after it was postponed on Jan. 15 due to disputes over stablecoin rewards restrictions and other decentralized finance provisions, which led major industry player Coinbase to withdraw support.
Snowstorm could postpone Senate markup again
There are fears that Tuesday’s markup will be pushed back again, with an incoming snowstorm predicted to strike Washington DC over the weekend.
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