The U.S. Senate's delay on the cryptocurrency market structure bill has increased regulatory uncertainty, putting pressure on related assets

Galaxy Digital's research director Alex Thorn stated that the U.S. Senate Banking Committee's originally scheduled hearing on the cryptocurrency market structure bill has been postponed, highlighting deep divisions between Congress and the industry on several key issues, particularly focusing on stablecoin yield mechanisms and DeFi-related provisions. This delay occurred just hours after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong withdrew his support for the bill. Armstrong publicly opposed the bill's references to tokenized securities, DeFi restrictions, and stablecoin yields. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott subsequently announced the postponement of the hearing, but a new timeline has yet to be released. With the Senate set to recess next week, the earliest possible resumption could be between January 26 and 30.

Alex Thorn pointed out that within just 48 hours, the bill draft was released late at night, over 100 amendments were submitted, and stakeholders continued to discover new points of contention at the last minute, significantly increasing the difficulty of political coordination. On the market side, following the announcement of the delay, cryptocurrency assets generally declined, with Bitcoin and Ethereum dropping about 2% on the day; related U.S. stocks also faced pressure, with Coinbase down 6.5%, Robinhood down 7.8%, and Circle down 9.7%. In his analysis, Thorn believes that although there is a significant consensus on the "market structure" itself, non-core but highly sensitive issues surrounding stablecoin yields, DeFi compliance, and granting the SEC regulatory tools in the area of tokenized securities have created insurmountable political divides. "The apparent gap in disagreements is not large, but the substantive chasm is deep."