US Senate Judiciary Committee leaders are seeking to remove crypto developer protections from the Senate’s crypto market structure bill, arguing the provisions would weaken unlicensed money transmitting laws.
Senate Judiciary chair Charles Grassley and the committee’s top Democrat, Richard Durbin, told Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and top Democrat Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday that the crypto bill as drafted would “create a significant enforcement gap for decentralized digital asset platforms.”
“Such a gap risks attracting illicit actors — like cartels and other sophisticated criminal organizations — to decentralized platforms,” Grassley and Durbin said in a letter Politico first reported on Friday.
“Criminals already use tactics to obscure unlawful transactions. This bill would make prosecuting this conduct even more difficult,” they added.
The Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees are looking to advance legislation defining how regulators will police crypto.
A draft of the bill released on Jan. 12 included parts of the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which aims to clarify that making crypto software or maintaining networks is exempt from federal or state money-transfer laws.
Senate Judiciary says it wasn’t consulted
The Senate Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over the country’s main criminal laws and the Justice Department, and Grassley and Durbin said it “was not consulted or given the opportunity to meaningfully review the proposed changes in advance.”
The pair asked the Banking Committee to “reject any proposed language” that they said would “weaken the government’s ability to hold culpable actors accountable for operating unlicensed money transmitting businesses.”
Related: DeFi leaders voice concerns amid market structure bill‘s uncertain future
Grassley and Durbin’s letter is the latest hangup to the Senate bill, after both the Banking and Agriculture Committees delayed scheduled markups of the bill in order to drum up bipartisan support.
If the bill survives the two committees and makes it to the Senate floor, it may need bipartisan support as it will need 60 votes to pass, which could require all 53 Republicans, along with some Democrats, to support it.
Major crypto lobbyist Coinbase pulled its support for the bill on Wednesday, taking issue with multiple provisions, but said on Friday that negotiations with lawmakers were ongoing.
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