House Lawmakers Face Pressure from DeFi Lobby, CME Group Over CLARITY Act
Crypto lobbyists push to restore provisions for decentralized developers they say CME Group is targeting
Welcome to the Friday edition of the Crypto In America newsletter!
What you’ll read: DeFi fights for CLARITY as CME defends its turf, the Senate jumps into Crypto Week, and the biggest headlines this week.
The dominant force in U.S. futures trading is pushing back against decentralized derivatives trading as it seeks to maintain its grip on the futures market, Crypto In America has learned.
Ahead of next week’s planned floor vote on the House’s market structure bill — the CLARITY Act — leaders from crypto’s DeFi community are raising concerns about late-stage changes to the legislative text, which they attribute to pressure from the powerful CME Group lobby on Capitol Hill.
CME Group, headquartered in Chicago, operates the world’s largest and most liquid interest rate futures market and is one of the biggest derivatives exchanges in the world.
So, what’s the beef?
Originally, DeFi proponents say, Section 409 of the bill offered broad protections for software developers building decentralized trading protocols, regardless of the type of financial product involved. But in now-public drafts of the House Rules Committee text, those safeguards were trimmed back to cover only activities involving 'spot' contracts — trades settled immediately in the spot market, as opposed to futures contracts, which are agreements to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a future date.
“Section 409 was initially written to shield DeFi developers from heavy-handed rules that could kill innovation,” one crypto lobbyist told Crypto in America.
In recent days, DeFi lobbyists have held calls and met with House lawmakers to push for restoring the bill’s original language — and their efforts appear to have paid off.
“It took a lot of work from a coalition led by the DeFi Education Fund to fix Section 409 this week, but our friends on the Hill got the message loud and clear: if you want industry support, don’t mess with DeFi,” said Jake Chervinsky, Chief Legal Officer of Variant and DeFi Education Fund board member. “The amendment isn’t perfect, but it’s a huge improvement on the Rules Committee print and sets up the industry well to demand more from the Senate.”
DeFi advocates viewed the changes to the text as an attempt to protect CME Group’s futures turf at the expense of upstart challengers, arguing that CME has a direct incentive to block the kind of regulatory clarity developers would need to build in the U.S.
A spokesperson for CME Group had no comment.
Crypto Week Goes Bicameral
It’s not just the House getting in on the action — the Senate is also set to hold a hearing and unveil crypto legislation of its own during what the lower chamber has dubbed “Crypto Week.”
After initially targeting this week, the Senate Banking Committee is now expected to release its market structure discussion draft next week, adding to an already packed crypto calendar on Capitol Hill.
The Senate Agriculture Committee is also set to hold its first hearing on digital asset market structure Tuesday, zeroing in on stakeholder views around federal oversight of so-called digital commodities.
Over in the House, lawmakers are preparing for floor votes on a trio of major crypto bills:
The GENIUS Act is expected to pass as a “clean” bill — unchanged from the version the Senate approved last month. If it clears the House, it will head straight to President Trump’s desk.
The CLARITY Act, aimed at defining regulatory jurisdiction and establishing clear rules for crypto market participants.
The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would prohibit the Fed from issuing a central bank digital currency.
Also on deck: The House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee has rescheduled its hearing on crypto tax policy for Wednesday.
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Weekly Recap
ICYMI. Here are some of the biggest news stories this week from the intersection of Washington and Web3:
The Senate confirmed pro-crypto Jonathan Gould as the new Comptroller of the Currency in a 50-45 vote. Gould has a strong pro-crypto track record, including greenlighting crypto custody and stablecoin guidance while previously working at the OCC, and later serving as chief legal officer at Bitfury.
The U.S. Treasury has scrapped its crypto broker reporting rule, which would have required decentralized exchanges to report customer transaction data to the government. The move follows a joint resolution by Congress under the Congressional Review Act to nullify the rule earlier this year.
Bitcoin surged to a new all-time high above $118,000, driven by strong institutional demand through ETFs and growing optimism around the administration’s pro-crypto policies.
Ripple has selected BNY Mellon to custody the $500 million reserve backing its RLUSD stablecoin.
Rumble is teaming up with MoonPay to power its crypto wallet, expected to launch in Q3.
Corporate bitcoin holdings surged to 847,000 BTC — worth $91 billion — in Q2, according to Bitwise, as more companies added the world’s largest digital asset to their balance sheets.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit dismissed Coin Center’s appeal over Treasury’s sanctions on Tornado Cash. The move followed a joint agreement to end the case after the U.S. eased sanctions on the software tool.
A group of crypto advocates, including Paradigm, DeFi Education Fund, and others, filed an amicus brief supporting Michael Lewellen’s opposition to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss his case. Lewellen, a blockchain developer and founder of Tarski Technologies, is challenging the government’s use of money transmission laws to prosecute developers of open-source, non-custodial crypto software.
President Trump’s Truth Social filed an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch the Crypto Blue Chip ETF holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cronos, and XRP.
CoreWeave, an AI cloud infrastructure provider, announced plans to acquire data center operator Core Scientific in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
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I hope they can bring back Section 409 to its original text.