Senate Banking Committee Sets May 14 CLARITY Act Markup as Lobbying Intensifies
Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott confirmed on May 9 that the panel will hold its markup session for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 on May 14 at 10:30 a.m. EST, setting the first formal committee vote on sweeping crypto market structure legislation after months of delays. The announcement follows a bipartisan stablecoin yield compromise brokered by Senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks, which resolved one of the bill’s most persistent sticking points. Two significant lobbying battles, however, remain visible in the public record ahead of Thursday’s session.
Exchanges Seek Removal of Manipulation Threshold
A Politico report published May 8 revealed that Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini pressed Senate Agriculture Committee members to strip language requiring exchanges to list only tokens “not readily susceptible to manipulation.” The provision, which would have applied a liquidity and governance standard to token listings, was removed after the exchanges argued it would effectively exclude smaller, less liquid assets from regulated U.S. platforms. Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad characterised the matter as old news already addressed in the Agriculture Committee markup, though the optics of three major exchanges coordinating to weaken a consumer-protection standard are difficult to dismiss as routine. The episode sits alongside a broader data point that demands attention: Binance held approximately 38% of global centralised spot volume in late 2025, while Coinbase remained below 7%, and four offshore derivatives platforms captured roughly 62% of $86 trillion in 2025 perpetuals volume. That competitive gap provides context for why U.S. exchanges are sensitive to any provision that might constrain their listing latitude, even if the manipulation standard was designed with investor protection in mind.
Bitcoin BTC$59,737.00▼0.65%
Ethereum ETH$1,564.64▼0.74%
Tether USDT$0.9986▲0.00%
BNB BNB$554.75▼1.61%
USDC USDC$0.9998▼0.01%
XRP XRP$1.04▼1.00%
Solana SOL$70.29▼1.88%
TRON TRX$0.3219▲0.45%
Figure Heloc FIGR_HELOC$1.04▲1.52%
Hyperliquid HYPE$61.76▼3.30%Banking Groups Push Back on Stablecoin Yield Language
Simultaneously, a coalition of banking trade associations including the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute and the Independent Community Bankers of America submitted formal recommendations arguing the Tillis-Alsobrooks yield compromise still permits reward structures that functionally replicate deposit interest. A Senate aide described the banking industry’s lobbying effort as limited in scope, and the scheduling of the markup suggests committee leadership intends to proceed with the current text. The bill’s path after the Banking Committee is also structurally complex; the Senate will need to reconcile this version with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s earlier version before a floor vote, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand continues to press for ethics provisions barring senior officials from profiting from the industry they regulate, citing polling data showing 73% of registered voters support such a bar. Coinbase’s Kara Calvert has noted the bill requires 60 Senate votes, meaning bipartisan support is not optional. A HarrisX survey of 2,008 registered voters conducted May 1 to 4 found 52% support the CLARITY Act, with net favourability of 48 points among Democrats and 43 among Republicans, which is a meaningful political cushion but not a guarantee of the procedural supermajority the bill requires. Thursday’s markup is a necessary condition for progress, not a sufficient one.
