The Democratic Party is willing to return to the negotiating table, and bipartisan discussions on cryptocurrency legislation may welcome a new turning point.
The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee was originally scheduled to review and vote on a comprehensive cryptocurrency market structure bill on January 27 (this Tuesday), but due to weather factors, the agenda has been postponed until this Thursday.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan legislative discussion that had once stalled has seen a turning point, with the Democratic Party signaling a willingness to return to the negotiating table.
According to a Democratic source familiar with the negotiations, at the beginning of January, the Republican side drafted a new version of the bill unilaterally without fully consulting the Democrats and planned to push for a vote, which directly led to a blockage in the bipartisan cooperation process.
Despite the aforementioned differences, a group of Democratic lawmakers has expressed a willingness to restart negotiations with the committee chairman, Republican Senator John Boozman's team, striving to reach a bipartisan consensus before the vote on Thursday.
Informed sources added that between November last year and the end of the year, the bipartisan teams had engaged in intensive bilateral discussions regarding the draft bill and organized multiple stakeholder meetings, with the overall negotiation process progressing smoothly. However, after the new year, the Republican side suddenly unilaterally adjusted their plans, breaking the previous cooperation rhythm and causing differences between the two parties.
Regarding the current negotiation progress, a spokesperson for the Senate Agriculture Committee stated that the months-long bipartisan meetings have sufficiently discussed the relevant topics, and the current version of the bill reflects the majority of the negotiation outcomes. For the remaining topics with differences, they have entered a phase where a vote must be pushed forward and should not be delayed indefinitely.
Moreover, Patrick Witt, the Executive Director of the White House Digital Asset Advisory Committee, recently publicly called for seizing the current window of favorable government attitude toward the cryptocurrency industry to accelerate the implementation of the cryptocurrency market structure bill.
In this regard, analysts point out that if the bill ultimately fails to pass smoothly, the U.S. cryptocurrency industry may continue to face "structural risk premiums," significantly suppressing the industry's development potential and affecting long-term development stability.