According to Odaily Odaily, Galaxy Digital's Head of Research, Alex Thorn, stated that the postponement of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee's scheduled review meeting on the crypto market structure bill highlights deep disagreements between Congress and industry on several key issues, particularly stablecoin yield mechanisms and DeFi-related provisions.
The postponement came hours after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong withdrew his support for the bill. Armstrong publicly opposed the bill's wording regarding tokenized securities, DeFi restrictions, and stablecoin yields. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott subsequently announced a postponement of the hearings, but has not yet released a new timetable. With the Senate adjourning next week, the earliest possible resumption date is between January 26th and 30th.
Alex Thorn pointed out that within just 48 hours, the draft bill was released late at night and more than 100 amendments were submitted. Stakeholders continued to discover new points of contention at the last minute, significantly increasing the difficulty of political coordination.
In the market, crypto assets generally declined after the delay announcement, with Bitcoin and Ethereum falling by about 2% that day; related US stocks also came under pressure, with Coinbase falling 6.5%, Robinhood falling 7.8%, and Circle falling 9.7%.
In his analysis, Thorn argues that while there is a broad consensus on the "market structure" itself, a difficult-to-bridge political divide has formed around non-core but highly sensitive issues such as stablecoin yields, DeFi compliance, and granting the SEC regulatory tools in the area of tokenized securities. "The surface differences between the disagreements are not large, but the actual gap is deep."
