01-22-2026 
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U.S. digital asset market structure legislation is fumbling toward its finish line, with one Senate committee proceeding without bipartisan support and another not proceeding at all.
- New Agriculture committee draft drops without Dem support
- Banking committee’s focus shifting away from blockchain
- Stablecoin yield v reward fight goes to Davos
- White House fires shots across Coinbase’s bow
- CFTC inspector general warns regulator isn’t up to the task
- Anchorage Digital prepping IPO?
- Trump’s crypto ventures keep rolling
Wednesday saw the Senate Agriculture Committee release the latest version of its Digital Asset Market Structure Act. Worryingly, the 161-page draft is a Republican-only affair, as extended negotiations failed to achieve the necessary buy-in of committee Democrats, who reportedly did not see the new draft before its release.
Ahead of the draft’s release, Politico quoted a spokesperson for committee Chair John Boozman (R-AR) saying “a handful of policy differences remain but there are many areas of agreement.” The spokesperson added that Boozman “appreciates the good-faith effort to reach a bipartisan compromise.”
A spokesperson for Cory Booker (D-NJ), the committee’s point person in these negotiations, said he has been “working in good faith with Senator Boozman for months to craft market structure legislation that can get broad support in the Senate.” The spokesperson went on to say that Booker “is committed to the shared goal of passing legislation that can get signed into law” and “will continue to work with the Chairman to get there.”
It’s worth remembering that 10 days ago, the Ag committee postponed a markup session scheduled for January 15 in order to provide what Boozman said was time “to finalize the remaining details and ensure the broad support this legislation requires.” So, that went well.
In a statement accompanying the new draft, Boozman said that “while differences remain on fundamental policy issues, this bill builds on our bipartisan discussion draft while incorporating input from stakeholders … It’s time we move this bill, and I look forward to the markup next week [on January 27 at 3pm EST].”
Released last November, the committee’s initial draft papered over the partisan divide by leaving many sections ‘bracketed,’ aka completely blank. These included sections addressing decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols—including legal liabilities for developers of non-custodial DeFi platforms—the ‘quorum’ issue (ensuring minority party representation on regulatory bodies), and the ‘ethics’ question (preventing elected officials and their families—including President Trump—from profiting off crypto ventures).
The Ag committee has authority over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which will be handed the brunt of digital asset oversight, leaving issues involving securities to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
We’ll have a fuller analysis on the new Ag draft’s contents a little later, but we’ll quickly note that it contains no language that would reopen the debate over whether the GENIUS Act’s prohibition on stablecoin issuers offering ‘yield’ to customers should be extended to third-party platforms offering their users ‘rewards’ for holding stablecoins on said platforms. (More on this later.)
Banking Committee taking its eye off crypto ball
Assuming this latest draft survives next week’s Ag committee markup, it will need to be resolved with companion legislation (the CLARITY Act) from the Senate Banking Committee, but that bill is even further from the finish line.
The fate of Banking’s market structure bill remains in limbo after last week’s last-minute cancellation of a markup session due to the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange withdrawing its support. There have been furtive talks among stakeholders and politicians but there’s been no sign that Banking chair Tim Scott (R-SC) is ready to schedule another markup session anytime soon.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Banking isn’t likely to consider the market structure bill again for “at least several weeks.” Apart from stakeholder squabbling, there’s also the sudden need to focus on President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order seeking to prohibit “large institutional investors” from purchasing “single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families.”
Affordability will be a major issue in the upcoming midterm election campaign, and Trump and Congressional Republicans are eager to be seen to be doing something about it. The shift in focus, possibly only the first in a series of wobblers that Trump could throw at Congress in the coming weeks/months, could sidetrack efforts to advance the market structure legislation.
However, President Trump referenced the Senatorial squabbling during his Wednesday address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Trump said Congress “is working very hard on crypto market structure legislation … which I hope to sign very soon, unlocking new pathways for Americans to reach financial freedom.”
Trump also stated that he’s “working to ensure America remains the crypto capital of the world,” repeating previous claims that he’s doing so in large part to thwart China’s desire to claim the ‘crypto capital’ mantle for themselves.
World Economic Friction
Also in Davos is Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who told CNBC that CLARITY’s cancelled markup session has provided “an opportunity for us to come back and chat with the bank CEOs and see what would create a win-win outcome.” Armstrong claimed to be meeting with some bank CEOs in Davos, “trying to figure out, okay, what would get them to a ‘yes.’”
Banks have argued that exchanges like Coinbase offering rewards to stablecoin holders will cause mass deposit flight as bank customers seek higher returns than they can get from savings accounts. The banks argue that this will negatively impact their ability to offer loans, particularly in the case of smaller community banks.
The crypto sector rejects this argument, saying the banks simply don’t want competition. But the banking sector counterargues that if exchanges want to act like banks, then they should face the same heavy-handed regulations as banks, not the comparative free-for-all envisioned in the crypto legislation currently being debated.
Speaking from Davos, David Sacks, the White House’s ‘AI & Crypto Czar,’ told CNBC that the CLARITY drama reminded him that the GENIUS Act “died about three times before it finally passed and was signed into law. So there’s a process here that has to be worked through.”
Sacks said he thinks banks “have to recognize” that if market structure legislation fails to pass, the status quo from GENIUS—exchanges offering stablecoin rewards—will continue. “If there’s no deal, then [banks] are going to lose on this issue. So I think it’s in their interest to work something out.”
But Sacks urged “some of the crypto folks … to see the bigger picture.” Yield might be “philosophically important to them, but so is getting an overall market structure bill.” (Stablecoins generate one-fifth of Coinbase’s overall revenue, so the issue is a little more than philosophically important.) Sacks added that “a good compromise is everyone leaves a little bit unhappy.”
Assuming a compromise is reached, Sacks foresees a day in which “we’re not going to have a separate banking industry and crypto industry. It’s going to be one digital assets industry.”
White House gets Witty
Reports emerged last week that the White House was seriously annoyed by Coinbase’s last-minute antics, a claim that Coinbase’s Armstrong denied. At the time, no one at the White House would go on record with their views, but that appears to have changed.
On January 20, White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt threw some major shade Armstrong’s way when he began a tweet with the Coinbase CEO’s own justification for pulling his support of the Senate bill. “No bill is better than a bad bill.”
Appearing to drip sarcasm, Witt then said “[w]hat a privilege it is to be able to say those words thanks to President Trump’s victory, and the pro-crypto administration he has assembled … So, do we take advantage of the opportunity to pass a bill now, with a pro-crypto President, control of Congress, excellent regulators at the SEC and CFTC to write the rules, and a healthy industry? Or do we fumble the ball and allow Dems to write punitive legislation in the wake of a future financial crisis à la Dodd-Frank?”
Witt concluded by saying Armstrong “might not love every part of the CLARITY Act, but I can guarantee you’ll hate a future Dem version even more. Let’s keep working to improve the product, recognizing that compromises will need to be made in order to get 60 votes in the Senate, but let’s not let perfect be the enemy of the good.”
Witt’s tweet got support from Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who tweeted that “[n]o piece of legislation has ever been perfect by everyone’s standards. What we need is a clear framework, allowing innovation to flourish—exactly what Market Structure will deliver. I’ll keep saying it (even if others disagree)—clarity over chaos.”Can CFTC future proof itself?
On January 20, CFTC Chair Michael Selig issued an op-ed in the Washington Post, celebrating the imminent arrival of a market structure bill on Trump’s desk and spotlighting the CFTC’s “important role in developing the rules for this new frontier of finance.”
Citing the need for the CFTC’s regulations to “adapt to meet our nation’s builders where they are,” Selig announced a new ‘Future-Proof’ initiative. In short, CFTC staff “will undertake a comprehensive review of the agency’s existing rules and regulations and modernize these requirements to ensure a level playing field for new entrants and incumbents alike.”
The market structure bills currently struggling to make it out of the Senate committees will hand the CFTC “a broad set of new responsibilities” overseeing digital assets. Selig urged Congress to “[p]ass us the torch, and we will ensure that these markets flourish at home with tailored regulatory frameworks that keep American markets the best in the world.”
However, a newly released report (dated December 3) from the CFTC’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) warns that handing the bulk of digital asset oversight to the CFTC “may present a significant management challenge.” This challenge could include “obtaining additional qualified staff,” given that the regulator has “experienced a decline in its staffing levels.”
The report notes that the number of full-time staff on the CFTC’s payroll at the end of the agency’s fiscal 2025 was “approximately 556,” down more than one-fifth from 708 at the end of fiscal 2024.
As such, the OIG says the CFTC “should consider human capital management as a top priority” in order to “ensure the agency has the appropriate talent and skill sets to meet an expanding regulatory landscape.”
It’s worth noting that Selig is currently the only person occupying the traditional five-person CFTC leadership ranks. Crypto critics have repeatedly pointed out the paradox of the CFTC shedding staff as its responsibilities increase, fearing that this lack of sufficient human oversight will give operators a license to behave badly, with dire results for consumers.
In a January 20 op-ed, Bloomberg’s editorial board claimed “crypto’s future will be sabotaged by feeble oversight.” The board warned that efforts by Congress to “enable promising innovations to flourish while curtailing bad behavior” are “likely doomed unless federal market regulators are empowered and equipped to do the job well.”
Bloomberg noted that the CFTC’s budget is one-sixth of the SEC’s and that Selig appears uneager to boost this budget by imposing fees on the crypto companies he’s now overseeing. The op-ed also pointed out that the federal government has “effectively dismantled” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in part due to complaints from tech firms (including prominent crypto operators that are the subject of thousands of customer complaints to the CFPB).
The op-ed points out that crypto assets could soon be included in Americans’ 401(k) retirement accounts. But if slapdash regulation “by enfeebled agencies leads more Americans to invest in cryptocurrencies, only to learn that fraud and crime remain pervasive, this effort is likely to backfire.”
The CFTC did just hire two new execs, Michael Passalacqua and Cal Mitchell, as Selig’s senior advisors. Mitchell is a former Treasury Department special advisor, while Passalacqua is a former Simpson Thacher & Bartlett attorney who co-authored a letter to Selig (when Selig was still at the SEC) that resulted in the SEC issuing a ‘no action’ letter last September regarding state-chartered trust companies serving as ‘qualified custodians’ of digital assets.
Anchorage IPO imminent?
Speaking of digital asset custodians, Anchorage Digital is reportedly the next crypto firm to be contemplating getting in on that sweet, sweet initial public offering (IPO) action. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Anchorage is looking to raise $200-$400 million in fresh capital ahead of a possible IPO in 2027.
In 2021, the same year Anchorage became the first American crypto firm to be issued a national bank charter, the company raised $350 million in a funding round led by investment firm KKR & Co. that valued the company at over $3 billion.
An Anchorage spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the report, saying only that “2025 was our year of scale. We made a series of acquisitions, inked major partnerships, and launched new business lines like stablecoin issuance to solidify our lead in institutional crypto.”
Last September, following Congress’s passage of the GENIUS Act, Anchorage outlined plans to dramatically expand its stablecoin team. That same month, Anchorage teamed up with leading stablecoin issuer Tether to become the legal issuer of USAT, Tether’s allegedly GENIUS-compliant stablecoin. (USAT was scheduled to launch in December but has yet to arrive.)
Last year saw a number of crypto firms go public, including stablecoin issuer Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL) and a couple of exchanges: Bullish Global (NASDAQ: BLSH) and the Winklevii-backed Gemini (NASDAQ: GEMI). All three are currently trading at fractions of their opening day prices, but the IPOs did provide significant windfalls for their senior execs.
Other firms signalling their IPO intentions include the Kraken exchange, the Securitize tokenization platform, Ethereum-focused developers Consensys, Digital Currency Group’s Grayscale Investments, UK digital asset managers Coinshares, and custodians Bitgo, who are making their NYSE debut on Thursday (22).
Tether, which historically has an aversion to the kind of disclosures that taking a company public would entail, was said to be looking to raise between $15-$20 billion last autumn via a private placement, although the company has been cagey about where this process stands.
Trump crypto ventures aren’t slowing down
Last October, Reuters reported that the Trump Organization leaned on crypto for over 90% of its income in the first half of 2025. On the one-year anniversary of Trump’s second stint as president, both Bloomberg and the New York Times saw fit to chronicle the income the family has earned over the past 12 months.
Bloomberg said the Trump family has “generated about $1.4 billion from crypto projects that are new to his second term,” representing “a sea change in how they’ll earn money for years to come.”
The Times said “at least $867 million” of the family’s 2025 income is directly attributable to their crypto ventures. However, this figure “is a minimum, not a full accounting,” and it’s “probable that Mr. Trump has collected several hundred million dollars in additional profits from his cryptocurrency ventures over the past year.”
Trump-linked crypto ops include (deep breath) the DeFi project World Liberty Financial, the digital asset treasury firm ALT5 Sigma Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTS), the treasury/block reward mining outfit American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC) (NASDAQ: ABTC), the $TRUMP memecoin, and the increasingly crypto-focused Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) (NASDAQ: DJT).
On December 31, TMTG announced plans to distribute a new ‘rewards’ token to its shareholders, one token for each share. On January 20, TMTG said the record date for figuring out who gets how many of these still unnamed tokens would be February 2.
After that recording, TMTG and its crypto partner Crypto.com will “mint the digital tokens, display them on the blockchain, and custody the digital assets pending distribution.” The date for this airdrop remains TBA, and additional tokens could be airdropped to shareholders “periodically throughout the year.” The tokens are expected to be used to claim “benefits or discounts” on TMTG platforms.
Meanwhile, WLF just announced plans to hold its inaugural World Liberty Forum, “an invitation-only convening of global leaders shaping the future of finance, technology, and policy.” The forum will be held at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on February 18.
Topics to be discussed include “the rapid evolution of financial markets, the rise of digital assets, the proliferation of artificial intelligence, the management of complex geopolitical risk, and how public-private collaborations can reshape the global economy.”
WLF says around 300 people are expected to attend, and speakers will include CFTC Chair Selig, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs (NASDAQ: GS) and Franklin Templeton, the leaders of several hedge funds and venture capital groups, along with WLF co-founders Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
Don Jr. was quoted as saying this “unmatched concentration of decision-makers” will help define “what the next century of American innovation, leadership, and economic influence will look like.” No word yet on what it might cost to attend this shindig, but if Trump’s history is any guide, you better bring some gold.
Watch: The quiet rise of blockchain in mainstream finance
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