US Senate crypto bill collapses in blow to industry

The defeat dealt a major blow to efforts to establish first comprehensive federal framework for digital-asset markets.

A smartphone displaying the Coinbase logo and representations of cryptocurrencies are placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken on June 8, 2023 [File: Dado Ruvic/Reuters]

The United States Senate has failed to advance comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation backed by President Donald Trump in a major blow for digital-asset companies and Republicans who had championed the bill for months.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed on Tuesday to secure the 60 votes needed to advance to a debate in the Senate, with safeguards governing Trump’s extensive crypto interests among the biggest obstacles to a deal.

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Four Republican senators – Jerry Moran, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and Thom Tillis – joined all the Democrats in voting against it. The vote was 50-49 in favour.

The vote effectively put the bill on ice, as Congress is set to depart Washington this month ahead of the November midterm elections in which Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to retain control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said the bill posed “massive risks to families, our national security, and our economy”.

“And if that’s not bad enough, while Americans across the country suffer from an affordability crisis, this bill will turbocharge President Donald Trump’s ability to rake in billions and billions of dollars from crypto,” she said.

The defeat dealt a major blow to efforts to establish the first comprehensive federal framework for digital-asset markets – and offered another illustration of Congress’s struggle to keep pace with disruptive new technologies as lawmakers wrestle with a similarly fraught debate over artificial intelligence.

Tillis switched his vote from yes to no in a procedural move that preserves his ability to bring the measure back up for reconsideration later.

The dispute was not purely partisan.

Community banks fiercely opposed provisions allowing rewards on stablecoin holdings, arguing they could pull deposits out of traditional lenders and reduce funding available for farmers and small businesses.

Several Republican senators also expressed concerns about those provisions, complicating party leaders’ efforts to muster support for the bill.

The deep-pocketed crypto industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning to advance the bill.

Trump, who has earned more than $1.4bn from his family’s crypto ventures , had urged Congress to pass it. Trump courted cash from the crypto industry on the 2024 campaign trail, calling himself a “crypto president”.

His regulators, particularly the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will now be positioned to fill the crypto policy void, but efforts to write favourable rules for the digital-asset industry could prove challenging.

Industry experts have said that only Congress can create a lasting regulatory framework. Without legislation, regulations will be vulnerable to a shifting political climate and court challenges, creating lingering hazards for the crypto industry, executives and analysts said.

The Trump administration’s own extensive rollback of dozens of SEC and consumer watchdog policies introduced under former Democratic President Joe Biden has underscored that risk.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, fell more than 5 percent as the vote appeared set to fail, its biggest daily percentage decline since June. Shares of crypto exchange Coinbase and stablecoin issuer Circle fell as much as 10 percent.

这次失败对建立首个全面的联邦数字资产市场框架的努力造成了重大打击。

这张摄于 2023 年 6 月 8 日的插图显示，一部智能手机（屏幕上显示 Coinbase 标志和加密货币图案）放在键盘上。[图片：Dado Ruvic/路透社]

美国参议院未能推进由唐纳德·特朗普总统支持的全面加密货币立法，这对几个月来一直支持该法案的数字资产公司和共和党人来说是一个重大打击。

周二，《数字资产市场透明度法案》未能获得参议院所需的 60 票，无法进入辩论阶段。其中，对特朗普广泛的加密货币利益进行监管的保障措施是达成协议的最大障碍之一。

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四位共和党参议员——杰里·莫兰、兰德·保罗、乔什·霍利和汤姆·蒂利斯——与所有民主党人一起投了反对票。最终投票结果为50票赞成，49票反对。

由于国会将于本月离开华盛顿，参加11月的中期选举，特朗普的共和党同僚们正在为保住众议院和参议院的控制权而战，因此此次投票实际上搁置了该法案。

马萨诸塞州参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦是参议院银行委员会的首席民主党议员，她表示该法案“对家庭、国家安全和经济构成巨大风险”。

“如果这还不够糟糕的话，当全美各地的美国人正遭受经济负担能力危机时，这项法案将极大地增强唐纳德·特朗普总统从加密货币中攫取数十亿美元的能力，”她说。

这次失败对建立首个全面的联邦数字资产市场框架的努力造成了重大打击，也再次表明国会难以跟上颠覆性新技术的步伐，因为立法者们正在就人工智能问题展开类似的激烈辩论。

蒂利斯将他的投票从赞成改为反对，这一程序性举措保留了他日后重新提出该措施进行重新审议的能力。

这场争论并非纯粹的党派之争。

社区银行强烈反对允许对稳定币持有量给予奖励的条款，认为这些条款可能会将存款从传统贷款机构撤走，并减少农民和小企业可获得的资金。

一些共和党参议员也对这些条款表示担忧，这使得党内领导人争取对该法案支持的努力变得更加复杂。

财力雄厚的加密货币行业花费数亿美元进行游说，以推动该法案的通过。

特朗普从其家族的加密货币产业中获利超过14亿美元，他曾敦促国会通过这项法案。在2024年总统竞选期间，特朗普积极争取加密货币行业的资金支持，并自诩为“加密货币总统”。

他的监管机构，特别是美国证券交易委员会和美国商品期货交易委员会，现在将填补加密货币政策的空白，但为数字资产行业制定有利规则的努力可能会充满挑战。

业内专家表示，只有国会才能制定出持久的监管框架。高管和分析师指出，如果没有立法，监管将很容易受到政治环境变化和法律挑战的影响，从而给加密货币行业带来长期风险。

特朗普政府大规模撤销了前民主党总统乔·拜登推出的数十项美国证券交易委员会和消费者权益保护政策，这凸显了这种风险。

由于投票结果似乎即将失败，全球最大的加密货币比特币下跌超过5%，创下自6月以来最大的单日跌幅。加密货币交易所Coinbase和稳定币发行商Circle的股价下跌幅度高达10%。