Enough US Senate Democrats still show they are ready to pass a crypto market structure bill that the effort has legs, they said Wednesday in a meeting with several crypto CEOs focused on a way forward with US crypto regulation.
Digital asset business leaders had two meetings for the same day, the first to discuss next steps with Democrats, whose votes will be needed to lift any bill over the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. The second meeting was with those lawmakers’ Republican counterparts, who presented a draft bill that is their answer to the House of Representatives’ Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
“It’s clear that there is a sufficient level of Democratic support,” Chainlink CEO and co-founder Sergey Nazarov said in a statement to CoinDesk between the meetings. He said more than 10 lawmakers attended, “all very committed to investing their time and effort to make the bill a success.”
Tensions have been rising between the parties and within crypto circles as the chances for Senate bandwidth narrow for 2025. When some Democratic legislative proposals on decentralized finance (DeFi) leaked recently, many in the industry saw the ideas as a fatal blow to market structure negotiations. Some of them have made those views public.
The Democratic caucus has had tough language about those tensions, attendees said, but the policy gaps are likely not insurmountable.
“I think that friction is transient and will resolve soon,” Nazarov said.
Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Institute, told CoinDesk in an interview that the meetings “reset the conversation,” but she said “we have our work cut out for us” when it comes to getting lawmakers’ knowledge level up to where it needs to be to write the legislation.
The meeting between the industry leaders and Democratic lawmakers is said to be led by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who has advocated for tailored crypto regulations for years. Democrats have shown a strong interest in addressing illegal financial concerns in the legislation, Nazarov said.
After the Republican caucus, a spokesperson for Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, issued a statement that Scott “calls on Democratic colleagues to immediately return to the negotiating table, engage in serious bipartisan discussions and provide substantive feedback on our bill.”
With both parties and the industry back at the table this week, crypto leaders hope it jump-starts the process. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who was scheduled to attend both meetings, said in a post on social media site X ahead of the meetings that he was “excited to roll up our sleeves with key decision makers” to get the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk.
After the first meeting, he again posted that the industry was “keeping the pressure on in DC” to pass a bill, and he also flagged a Stand With Crypto effort to rally support for it.
However, a number of obstacles remain in that process. The Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees must advance language to the full Senate, and the former is the only one to draft a draft so far. And if the Senate approves an eventual bill, it must return to the House for a vote there before it can move to Trump for a signature.
Crypto votes in Congress have been a bright spot in US policymaking, with big, bipartisan results for the recent bill to regulate stablecoin issuers and the House’s Clarity Act. But legislation must be finished before it can win a vote.
“It’s really in everyone’s best interest to pass the bill — to get the digital asset community accepted by the U.S. government,” Nazarov said.
While the bill is the priority target, Smith said doing so this year is not doom and gloom.
“All is not lost if we don’t get it done in the short term,” she said, referring to the policy work being done at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with both agencies writing in crypto policy and not waiting for new authorities from Congress. “We’re seeing real progress and real clarity that I think is ultimately going to be lasting.”
UPDATE (October 22, 2025, 20:12 UTC): Added comments from Senator Tim Scott’s office.
UPDATE (October 22, 2025, 21:06 UTC): Adds comments from Kristin Smith at the Solana Policy Institute.
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