U.S. Democratic senators working on cryptocurrency market structure legislation filed several amendments on Friday, including measures to address conflicts of interest with U.S. officials profiting from the crypto industry.
Focused on ethics amendments were filed Tuesday ahead of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s adoption of cryptocurrency market structure legislation, which aims to bring greater clarity to federal digital asset regulations, define agency oversight and provide regulatory certainty for investors and market participants.
One of the most notable amendments was Senator Michael Bennet’s alleged inclusion of the Digital Assets Ethics Act in cryptocurrency market structure legislation to prevent U.S. officials from profiting from the cryptocurrency industry.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats have raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s alleged conflict of interest with the crypto industry, including his involvement in crypto platform World Liberty Financial, which has added hundreds of millions of dollars to his net worth.
The CFTC should fill the vacancies before the bill takes effect
Another amendment from Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar seeks to delay implementation of the bill until the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has a full complement of commissioners.
The CFTC is currently led solely by Chairman Michael Selig, who was sworn in on December 22. There is no specific timeline for when the remaining four commissioner positions are expected to be filled.
Senators Roger Marshall, Dick Durbin and Peter Welch also introduced amendments to include the Credit Card Competition Act, which seeks to prohibit “credit card networks and certain card-issuing financial institutions from requiring network exclusivity for credit cards.”
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The Senate margin on Tuesday comes after it was postponed to Jan. 15 due to disputes over stablecoin reward restrictions and other decentralized finance regulations, prompting major industry player Coinbase to withdraw support.
A snowstorm could swing the Senate’s margin again
There are concerns that Tuesday’s margins will be pushed back again with an upcoming snowstorm hitting Washington over the weekend.
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