Senate to Release Unified Crypto Market-Structure Draft With Three Weeks Left Before Recess

Senate staff are expected to release a unified draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act during the week of July 13, merging months of parallel work by the Banking and Agriculture committees, according to crypto.news. The bill would divide oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set rules for when a token counts as a security.

The vote count is tight. Republicans hold roughly 53 Senate seats, so the measure needs about seven Democratic votes to clear the 60-vote threshold, and lawmakers have around 20 working days after July 13 before the August recess. Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming has set the end of July as a firm deadline, warning that a delay into the fall would overlap with midterm campaigning. Representative French Hill has separately urged the Senate to vote before the recess while acknowledging unresolved ethics language. Lummis has named three open items: treatment of decentralized-finance protocols, anti-money-laundering provisions, and ethics clauses.

The timing intersects with a notable personnel change. Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal, who led the exchange's multi-year legal fight with the SEC, notified the company on July 8 that he will resign effective July 31, just as the industry's central legislative push reaches its decisive stage.