More than 100 crypto firms and industry organizations are pressing the U.S. Senate to accelerate long-delayed digital asset market structure legislation. Their message is straightforward: if Washington continues to hesitate, innovation, capital, and entrepreneurial talent will keep moving to jurisdictions outside the United States.
The push took shape in a joint letter sent on April 23 by the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association. The two groups urged the Senate Banking Committee to begin a markup of the Clarity Act, a bill designed to establish a more complete federal framework for digital assets. In U.S. legislative practice, the markup stage is where lawmakers formally review, amend, and prepare a bill for further consideration, so moving to that step would signal meaningful momentum.
According to reporting cited by Bitcoin Magazine, the letter was addressed to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren, Subcommittee Chair Cynthia Lummis, and Ranking Member Ruben Gallego. The addressees reflect how seriously the industry is treating this effort. Rather than pursuing scattered lobbying goals, major parts of the crypto sector are aligning around one core priority: regulatory clarity.
The signatories include some of the best-known names in the digital asset industry, including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, and Circle. They are joined by venture capital firms, developer organizations, and academic groups. That breadth matters. The coalition is not limited to exchanges or token issuers; it represents a large cross-section of the ecosystem, from infrastructure providers to research communities, all making the same argument that uncertainty is holding the industry back.
At the center of the debate is the unresolved division of authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Because Congress has not clearly defined those jurisdictional boundaries in statute, the industry says the United States has drifted into a system of “regulation by enforcement”, where lawsuits, settlements, and agency actions effectively shape the rules after the fact instead of clear laws doing so in advance.
The coalition argues that even if regulators try to assert oversight through litigation, agency action alone cannot create the durable and predictable framework needed for long-term investment. Companies deciding where to build, list products, hire teams, or deploy capital need certainty on basic questions: how digital assets are classified, which regulator has authority, how trading venues should operate, and what disclosures are required. In their view, only Congress can provide that kind of stable foundation.
Why the industry says crypto innovation may leave the United States
The letter goes beyond the SEC-CFTC dispute and outlines several additional priorities. One of them is protection for developers building non-custodial technologies. In practical terms, the coalition is arguing that developers of non-custodial wallets, blockchain protocols, and self-managed tools should not automatically be treated as if they were custodians or centralized intermediaries simply because users interact with their code.
The signatories also call for preserving consumer rewards associated with payment stablecoins. That point matters in the broader stablecoin debate because some proposals could limit how these products are distributed or what benefits users can receive. The coalition is signaling that any federal framework should not unintentionally remove features that help stablecoin-based payment products gain adoption.
Another major request is a more streamlined disclosure regime tailored to blockchain-based assets. Traditional securities disclosure models were designed for corporate issuers and may not fit many decentralized or token-based networks. The industry position is not that disclosure should disappear, but that disclosure rules should be adapted to the actual structure of crypto assets rather than copied over mechanically from legacy markets.
The letter also strongly favors a unified federal standard over a fragmented state-by-state system. For digital asset businesses operating across state lines, a patchwork of separate licensing rules, compliance obligations, and supervisory expectations can become both expensive and slow. A single federal approach, the coalition says, would lower friction, reduce duplicated compliance costs, and make it easier for legitimate firms to scale inside the U.S. rather than abroad.
Industry leaders warn that the United States is already falling behind jurisdictions that have moved faster. The letter specifically highlights the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA). By creating legal certainty across member states, MiCA has helped position the EU as a more competitive destination for digital asset innovation. The comparison is politically significant: it suggests that regulatory clarity is not just a legal issue, but also a global competitiveness issue.
Ji Hun Kim, chief executive of the Crypto Council for Innovation, described the current period as a critical moment in determining the future of financial technology in the United States. He argued that Congress has already laid some bipartisan groundwork and that efforts such as the GENIUS Act on stablecoins could serve as a foundation for broader digital asset legislation. In other words, the coalition is not starting from zero; it sees an opening to build from narrower legislative progress toward a more comprehensive framework.
The language in the letter is explicit. It says the United States cannot risk returning to the previous era of regulation by enforcement. Market structure legislation, the coalition argues, would reduce uncertainty by establishing clear jurisdictional lines, appropriate disclosure regimes, and fit-for-purpose rules crafted specifically for digital assets instead of forcing the sector into frameworks built for very different financial products.
The Clarity Act still has not reached a key Senate step
Despite the urgency expressed by the coalition, the Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled a markup for the Clarity Act. That delay leaves the industry in a holding pattern. Companies, investors, and developers can lobby, prepare, and negotiate, but without movement in committee, no broad federal framework can realistically advance. The result is continued uncertainty at a time when global competitors are moving ahead.
The issue gained additional political weight when U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the Senate to pass the legislation during a hearing on Donald Trump’s FY2027 budget. Bessent framed digital asset legislation as important to preserving U.S. financial leadership and maintaining the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. That language places crypto policy within a much larger strategic conversation about economic power and global financial architecture.
Bessent also described digital assets as both an economic and a national security priority. He emphasized the need for clearer rules as well as stronger oversight tools, including AML (anti-money laundering) and KYC (know your customer) frameworks. His remarks are notable because they reinforce a point often lost in political debate: asking for regulatory clarity is not the same as asking for no regulation. The argument from many parts of the industry is that effective oversight works better when responsibilities and standards are explicitly defined.
Even so, lawmakers remain divided. In addition to the Clarity Act, other proposals remain in circulation, including the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act. Before any major market structure package can move forward, competing drafts and priorities will likely need to be reconciled through negotiation. That legislative complexity helps explain why progress has been slow even as pressure from the industry continues to build.
Bessent also warned that unclear U.S. rules have already pushed crypto innovation offshore. At the same time, he expressed confidence that bipartisan agreement is still achievable. For the market, that creates a mixed picture: there is growing high-level recognition of the problem, but there is still no final consensus on the exact shape of federal oversight.
Taken together, the coalition letter and Bessent’s testimony point to the same underlying conclusion. The central problem in the U.S. crypto market is no longer whether rules are needed, but whether Congress can produce a coherent, durable, and nationally consistent framework before more capital and innovation migrate elsewhere. If the Clarity Act or related legislation continues to stall, the United States risks losing ground not only in crypto entrepreneurship, but also in broader financial technology leadership.