State of Crypto: Wrapping Up the Month

Congressional panels have advanced nominations for regulators who will deal with crypto, but the full Senate hasn’t confirmed them yet. We’re also running out of time for market structure.

PS: I’ll be in Washington, D.C. for the Blockchain Association’s annual summit. I’d love to say hi if you’re there.

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Two weeks left

The narrative

Two weeks ago, this newsletter looked at how time was running out for the crypto industry to lock in legislative wins in 2025. Now, with December in full swing and the House and Senate both down to their last two scheduled working weeks, it’s time to take stock of what’s left to do.

Why it matters

We’ve seen the regulatory agencies take steps since last month to further advance crypto efforts. Congress, however, remains in an odd state of limbo.

Breaking it down

The biggest question continues to be when Congress might make further progress on market structure legislation. It’s clear by this point that this bill — whatever the final text happens to be — won’t become law before next year at the soonest.

What’s less clear is whether the drafts we’ve seen will even get to a markup hearing before January. The Senate Banking Committee was looking at December 18 as a tentative date to hold a markup on its version, but negotiations on bill text appear to be ongoing. Ditto with the Senate Agriculture Committee; its members have not made any public statements about their version of the market structure bill since releasing the first draft of the text weeks ago.

The Senate is making more visible progress on advancing President Donald Trump’s nominees to run the CFTC and FDIC. Both Mike Selig and Travis Hill are on a Senate Resolution intended to let that body of Congress confirm nearly 100 nominees at once. A vote was supposed to happen this week but that did not happen; the Senate is now expected to vote on this resolution next week sometime.

This week

This week

• The Senate will vote on a resolution to confirm, among others, CFTC Chair nominee Mike Selig and FDIC Chair nominee Travis Hill.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!

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