Democratic aide: ‘We are all willing to return to the table’ after Senate Ag crypto talks unravel

It's crunch time for some within the Senate Agriculture Committee to see if any bipartisan compromise can be reached ahead of a hearing later this week to vote on sweeping cryptocurrency legislation.

The Senate Agriculture Committee was scheduled to hold that hearing to amend and vote on a bill on Tuesday, but it was delayed to Thursday due to wintry conditions in Washington, D.C. In the meantime, a group of Democrats is working on getting Republicans on that committee back to the table to get bipartisan language ahead of Thursday.

"We have a group of Democrats who are serious about getting a bill done in the committee and we are all willing to get back to the table with the [Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Republican Sen. John] Boozman team to do that," a Senate Democratic aide with knowledge of the conversations told The Block on Monday.

Work to pass crypto legislation that would ultimately seek to create a federal regulatory framework for digital assets, in part through divvying up jurisdiction between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and putting forward certain disclosure requirements, has not gone smoothly on the Senate side over the past month.

The Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee have oversight over the SEC and the CFTC, respectively. So, bills from both committees are essential and need to be passed before heading to the full Senate floor for a vote. Both committees were initially slated to hold hearings on Jan. 15 to amend and vote on their bills, but that ended up not happening.

The Senate Agriculture Committee, which is viewed as being more collaborative than its banking committee counterparts, postponed that hearing. At the time, Chair Boozman said that bipartisan progress was being made. Meanwhile, the Senate Banking Committee forged on with plans to hold that Jan. 15 hearing until the eleventh hour until behemoth crypto exchange Coinbase pulled its support, citing concerns around tokenized equities and a looming issue — how to treat stablecoin rewards.

A markup in the Senate Banking Committee has not yet been set.

Inside Senate Ag negotiations

The Senate Banking Committee's negotiations have come out more in the spotlight, while the Senate Agriculture Committee's have been more muted.

Sara Lasure, a spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee, said there had been months of bipartisan meetings, in an emailed statement to The Block.

"The legislation the committee will markup on Thursday reflects much of what was discussed and negotiated during that time," Lasure said. "There are some issues that the parties have disagreements about. At some point you must move forward and vote. We have reached that point."

In early fall, Chair Boozman reached out to Democratic lawmakers on his committee about working on a crypto market structure bill and setting forth with a bipartisan path forward, the Democratic aide said.

Later in November, the Senate Agriculture Committee released a discussion draft that had brackets. Those brackets were in part due to not being able to talk to the CFTC during the government shutdown, and some were policy disagreements, the aide said.

"We met with every stakeholder under the sun, nine to five, for several weeks — November until the end of the year, with the Boozman team to gather feedback and gather everyone's thoughts,"  the Senate Democratic aide said. "So it had been, and we thought, like a really good bipartisan process."

However, in the new year, things shifted.

"When we returned, we were kind of taken off guard when in the first week of January, they told us that they had changed their plans, had written a new draft without us, and were planning to mark it up that Thursday, the 15th," the aide said. "I really appealed to Sen. Boozman and said, like, we were working so well together, what's going on."

The aide said that Boozman's team said that they'd been working on the bill text enough and that it was time for a vote.

"It does feel to us like a little uncharacteristic for that team," the Democratic aide later said. "I have nothing bad to say, I really appreciate the Boozman staff and Sen. Boozman himself, who've been really collaborative and really tried to work really hard to make that discussion draft in November bipartisan."

Last week, the Senate Agriculture Committee, led by Republicans, released its bill text, but it lacked Democratic support. Later, amendments were filed, including one that seeks to address concerns among many Democrats with Trump and his family's crypto interests.

Some key Democratic negotiators did not offer amendments.

"At this point, we're not prepared to mark up a partisan process that blows up the bipartisan work that we've done," the aide said, adding that they were still willing to get back to the negotiating table and mark up a bipartisan bill.

Still, the Democratic aide said they were hopeful.

"We really feel like we're so close to a bipartisan deal and the decision in January to blow up the bipartisan work — we don't know exactly why or how that comes to be a part of the strategy, but I just think that we worked for months on this in a bipartisan way and there's no reason why we just can't finish it that way too," the aide said.

Pressure to move forward

During the Senate Agriculture Committee's markup, TD Cowen's Washington Research Group managing director Jaret Seiberg said it is unlikely for Democrats to back the bill, but said there could be negotiations happening during the markup.

"We expect Chair John Boozman will make promises to Democrats to change the bill before it goes to the full Senate with the hope of picking up Democratic support," Seiberg said Monday.

As for the timing for the Senate Banking Committee's markup, Seiberg said it may not happen until March or April.

Meanwhile, top officials at the White House have urged quick passage of a cryptocurrency market structure bill. Last week, Patrick Witt, executive director of the President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said that the U.S. needs to pass the bill promptly before it loses momentum under the current crypto-friendly administration.

"There will be a crypto market structure bill — it's a question of when, not if," the White House crypto advisor said in a post on X.

If legislation is not passed, it could "cause a structural risk premium" to continue in the digital asset industry, said Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer in a note on Monday.

"We would view non-enactment of the CLARITY Act this year as a postponement of structural upside rather than a negative inflection for the crypto sector," Palmer said. "Global adoption would continue, innovation would persist, and institutional interest would remain, but the U.S. market would operate below its potential without the clarity that the legislation would bring."