Digital asset market structure legislation won’t come up for a vote on the U.S. Senate floor until next year, but a key regulatory position is closer to being filled.
On November 18, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told Fox Business that he expects both the Senate Banking Committee, which he chairs, and the Agriculture Committee to hold markup sessions and votes on their respective digital asset market structure bills in December. Scott said the goal is to have a Senate floor vote on the two committees’ merged bill “early next year so that President [Donald] Trump will sign the legislation.”
Scott’s previous deadline for markups/committee votes was September 30, so not everyone is taking his forecast as carved in stone. And in a worrying sign, Scott put all of the blame for the delays on the committee’s Democratic members. Scott claimed the Dems “have been stalling and stalling and stalling because they don’t want President Trump to make America the crypto capital of the world. They don’t want to give him the win.”
Politico quoted a spokesperson for the committee’s ranking member, Rubin Gallego (D-AZ), saying members of both parties have been “working tirelessly” to reach consensus, adding that “taking the time necessary to produce a strong, bipartisan product is not the same thing as stalling, and implying that Democrats don’t want to get this done isn’t productive.”
The Banking committee’s Dems have lingering concerns regarding the GOP-authored bill’s decentralized finance (DeFi) language and what they perceived as the committee’s GOP leaders ignoring Dems’ input. Similar concerns led to the DeFi section of the Ag committee’s market structure bill being left completely blank, indicating that the parties were nowhere near consensus.
The 43-day government shutdown threw a wrench into this process, and with Congress adjourning Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday week, there remain only three weeks left on the Congressional calendar in which to realize Scott’s latest timeline. Regardless, Ag committee chair John Boozman (R-AR) said last week that he expects his committee to have its bill ready for markup by “early December.”
On November 19, The Hill quoted Brian Armstrong, CEO of the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) exchange, saying, “all the senators I’ve spoken to are feeling a real sense of urgency to get this done. They’ve told me it’s 90% of the way there. They don’t want to be dealing with it in the middle of next year either.”
Selig moves closer to CFTC chair
Another Ag committee market structure sticking point was the Dems’ push for minority party representation at federal agencies, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This element came up during questioning of Michael Selig, Trump’s nominee for CFTC chair, during the Ag committee’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
Both Senate market structure bills envision the CFTC taking the lion’s share of digital asset oversight, with a lesser role for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CFTC’s five-member commission is currently staffed only by acting chair Caroline Pham, who has stated her intention to leave once Selig is confirmed. Meanwhile, Trump has been slow to nominate individuals to fill the four remaining empty seats.
Ag committee ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) quizzed Selig as to whether he would advocate for minority party representation on the CFTC panel, as required by law. Selig hedged, saying that while he welcomed a “diversity of viewpoints,” he’d leave the matter up to Trump. Selig added that Pham’s tenure as acting chair showed the CFTC “is able to function with a single chairman.”
This prompted criticism from Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who wondered if a one-man CFTC would leave Selig “vulnerable to the pressure of the president, as the only one there.” This is not an idle concern, given that the Trump family’s numerous crypto ventures will be among those Selig is asked to oversee.
Slotkin said she’d “be watching” to ensure Selig didn’t buckle under this potential presidential pressure, although once he’s confirmed, there will be little she or the other Ag committee Dems can do about it.
Selig also ducked the issue of whether the CFTC would require additional resources to handle digital asset oversight on top of its other responsibilities, saying that he’d address the situation once he’s installed. Selig’s reluctance to commit was all the more unusual given the bipartisan support for boosting the CFTC’s budget expressed by committee members during the hearing.
Confirmation hearings have largely become performative, in that the nominees provide only the vaguest of responses, affirming their desire to honor precedent but refusing to commit when pressed for specifics on controversial issues.
Overall, Selig expressed broad support for all things crypto while criticizing the CFTC’s previous leadership for taking a ‘regulation by enforcement’ approach to digital assets. Selig also suggested that financial regulations may not be applicable to many blockchain applications.
Selig said DeFi is “something of a buzzword, but really we should be looking to onchain markets and onchain applications, and thinking about the features of these applications, as well as where there’s an actual intermediary involved.”
On Thursday, the Ag committee voted 12-11 along strict party lines to approve Selig’s nomination. Next stop is a vote by the full Senate at some future date. The GOP enjoys a wider majority on the Senate floor, which should give Selig confidence to start measuring the drapes in Pham’s office.
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SEC’s Atkins sees no securities here
One week before Selig’s hearing, SEC chair Paul Atkins offered an update on his agency’s Project Crypto roadmap. In a speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Atkins reiterated his belief that “most crypto tokens trading today are not themselves securities.”
Basically, ‘network tokens,’ ‘digital collectibles,’ and ‘digital tools’ (“a membership, ticket, credential, title instrument, or identity badge”) aren’t securities, while ‘tokenized securities’ are securities. If you’re still confused, Atkins promised that the SEC was considering establishing “a token taxonomy” that would unmuddy these waters.
The Howey test, which has been used for nearly a century to identify what is or isn’t a security, “entails an investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the essential managerial efforts of others.” Atkins’s view is that “these representations or promises must be explicit and unambiguous as to the essential managerial efforts to be undertaken by the issuer.”
According to Atkins, “one must then ask, ‘how can a non-security crypto asset separate from an investment contract?’ The simple yet profound answer: the issuer either fulfills the representations or promises, fails to satisfy them, or they otherwise terminate … Once the investment contract can be understood to have run its course, or expires by its own terms, the token may continue to trade, but those trades are no longer ‘securities transactions’ simply by virtue of the token’s origin story.”
Atkins describes himself as “a strong proponent of ‘super-apps’ in finance that allow for the custody and trading of a variety of asset classes within a single regulatory license.” Atkins has asked SEC staff to “prepare recommendations for the Commission to consider that would allow tokens tied to an investment contract to trade on non-SEC regulated platforms, including those intermediaries registered at the CFTC or through a state regulatory regime.”
Atkins said the SEC “will align our rules and enforcement with the economic reality that investment contracts can end and networks can stand on their own.” The SEC will also “consider a package of exemptions to create a tailored offering regime for crypto assets that are part of or subject to an investment contract.”
Atkins cautioned that all of the above doesn’t signal “a promise of lax enforcement at the SEC … if you raise money by promising to build a network, and then take the proceeds and disappear, you will be hearing from us, and we will pursue you to the full extent of the law.”
And yet, since Atkins took the reins, the SEC has ‘paused’ or dropped nearly all the enforcement actions against crypto companies left over from the previous administration. And a new report from Cornerstone Research found there were only three enforcement actions initiated by the SEC in the second half of its fiscal year (which ended September 30). This marks a record low, obliterating the previous low of 19 in the second half of FY17.
And on November 17, the SEC’s Division of Examinations omitted digital assets from its annual list of priorities for the year ahead. Asked by Reuters about the omission, an SEC spokesperson claimed the stated priorities are “not … an exhaustive list.”
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Kraken going public
If you ignore the dramatic implosion of token prices over the past six weeks (BTC nearly sank below $86,000 on Thursday), the political/regulatory climate has never been more favorable for digital asset operators. As such, it’s no surprise that the Kraken exchange has finally filed its paperwork to go public on the Nasdaq.
On November 19, Kraken confirmed that it had filed a confidential submission of its initial public offering (IPO) paperwork with the SEC. The confidential filing means Kraken’s full financial picture will remain a mystery for the time being, although the company released the broad strokes of its third-quarter performance last month.
Less than two months ago, Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi told DL News that his company was in no rush to join the flurry of digital asset firms going public in recent months. This included USDC-issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) and rival exchanges Bullish Global (NASDAQ: BLSH) and Gemini (NASDAQ: GEMI). Sethi claimed at the time that “if we were a part of what I call the pack of companies that have FOMO to go public, then we would have already filed.”
The confidential filing means we’ll have to wait to see how high Kraken will price its shares, but they will likely be an order of magnitude greater than Gemini’s $28, given Kraken’s significant trading volume advantage over Gemini.
However, it remains to be seen what kind of investment climate will greet Kraken’s IPO. Those other IPOs enjoyed the hype that surrounded Trump’s unraveling of most crypto regulatory constraints, which goosed token prices and lured investors.
But the ongoing token price crash has weighed heavily on these newly listed companies, which now trade at a fraction of their listing price. It will be months until Kraken’s IPO occurs, by which time euphoria may have returned to the market. But you never know.
Kraken’s IPO announcement came just one day after it revealed that it had raised $800 million in two different funding tranches over the past two months. Notable participants in these rounds included Citadel Securities, Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, and others, including the family office of co-CEO Sethi. The raise valued Kraken at $20 billion.
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Coin mixers the only crypto bros not enjoying Trump 2.0
In less positive crypto developments, William Lonergan Hill, co-founder of the Samourai Wallet BTC-focused coin mixing platform, was sentenced to four years in federal prison on November 19. Lornegan and Samourai’s other co-founder, Keonne Rodriguez, pleaded guilty earlier this year to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The pleas were made in exchange for prosecutors dropping money laundering charges filed against the pair last year.
Lornegan’s sentence is shorter than the five-year maximum sentence Rodriguez received earlier this month. The more favorable outcome appears to have been based on U.S. District Judge Denise Cote’s belief that Lornegan’s remorse was more sincerely felt than his former partner, who Cote felt had failed to accept responsibility for his actions.
Before their arrest, the Samourais were unrepentant promoters of their platform’s ability to assist criminals looking to launder their ill-gotten digital gains. And yet, the DeFi community howled with outrage at what they perceived to be the Department of Justice (DoJ) prosecuting individuals simply for ‘writing code.’
A couple of months ago, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti gave a speech detailing the DoJ’s willingness to prosecute “those who knowingly commit crimes—or who aid and abet the commission of crimes” via DeFi platforms. But Gaelotti appeared to offer a pass to DeFi developers in the absence of “evidence that a defendant knew of the specific legal requirement and willfully violated it.”
And yet, on November 12, federal prosecutors filed a 113-page brief opposing the bid by Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm to convince a federal court to overturn his August conviction for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Prosecutors said the evidence that convicted Storm “was more than sufficient; it was overwhelming.” Prosecutors maintained that Storm understood his Ethereum-focused coin mixing service was “transmitting crime proceeds and funds used to promote crime.”
Storm’s dilemma has attracted far more support from the DeFi community than the Samourais enjoyed, despite the fact that Storm and other Tornado Cash staff used to show up at conferences wearing T-shirts featuring washing machine icons and the Tornado Cash logo. His supporters claim this was a joke; prosecutors didn’t see the humor.
Regardless, DeFi fans have expressed confusion regarding the official position of the DoJ when it comes to DeFi platforms and the liability of those who develop these tools if/when they’re used by criminals, terrorists, and economic sanction evaders.
On November 20, the Solana Policy Institute sent a letter to President Trump seeking to influence him on DeFi matters, including the market structure legislation. But the letter, which was co-signed by 65 other blockchain companies and advocacy groups, also asked Trump to lean on the DoJ to “dismiss all open charges against Roman Storm and express support for Storm’s efforts to overturn his conviction under 18 U.S.C. 1960 nofollowon appeal.”
The letter argues that Storm’s activities were “the publication of open-source software–not a financial crime. Dropping the case would reaffirm the Administration’s commitment to protecting developers. Doing so will further support that code is speech under the First Amendment and signals that the U.S. will protect innovation.”
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ATM laundry
In less debatable crypto crime news, on November 18, the DoJ announced money laundering charges against Firas Isa, founder of Virtual Assets LLC, a Chicago-based cash-to-crypto exchange business operating as Crypto Dispensers.
Prosecutors allege that this business, which included a number of BTC ATMs operating across the country, processed “at least $10 million in proceeds from wire fraud and narcotics offenses.”
Isa and an unidentified ‘Co-Conspirator 1’ allegedly “knew that co-conspirators, or in some cases, fraud victims, would deposit funds derived from wire fraud into these cryptocurrency ATMs, convert the funds to cryptocurrency, and then transfer the cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency wallet addresses in a manner to conceal and disguise the nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds.”
Isa has pleaded not guilty, and a hearing has been scheduled for January 30, 2026. If convicted, Isa faces a maximum penalty of 20 years.
The indictment was announced one day after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released a report into crypto-based money laundering. The report included a section devoted to similar ‘crypto-to-cash’ services that are popular with criminals due to the operators’ disinterest in ‘know your customer’ and anti-money laundering regulations.
The indictment also came one week after the DoJ announced it had partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Secret Service on a new joint Scam Center Strike Force devoted to combating “cryptocurrency-related fraud and scams.”
Crypto ATMs are extremely popular with criminals looking to launder their stolen loot. In August, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a warning to financial institutions, urging them to “be vigilant in identifying and reporting suspicious activity” involving crypto ATMs.
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Source: https://coingeek.com/us-digital-asset-market-structure-bill-wont-get-a-vote-until-2026/
