As the U.S. Government nears the end of day three of a shutdown and the crypto industry frets over delayed ETF approvals, one office on Capitol Hill is still charging forward on President Trump’s crypto agenda with an aim to getting a market structure bill on his desk by the end of the year.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo), Chair of the Subcommittee on Digital Assets and one of the key leaders on negotiating a crypto market structure bill in the Senate, responded to an inquiry about whether the effects of a shutdown would slow or stall this work. A spokesperson for Lummis’ office responded by text, “Senator Lummis continues to work on market structure legislation; we’re full steam ahead.”
Crypto policy experts agree that while a shutdown has direct impacts on the executive branch, including key regulators such as the SEC and CFTC, the legislative branch and its work, while muted, actually have the time to work out specific details of a bill. So ironically, the shutdown may end up benefitting the progress of a market structure bill becoming law in 2025.
How a Shutdown Benefits Progress on Market Structure
Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association and former CFTC commissioner, explains how a U.S. government shutdown can actually help Congressional staff to make progress on legislation. Mersinger said, “It turns out a lot of congressional staff still end up working, but there’s a lot less going on…so in some sense, it frees up congressional staff to maybe work on things that they have to clarify throughout the day. So I am somewhat optimistic that this will give the folks in the Senate working on market structure, a chance to kind of really focus in on it.”
Mersinger, also a former staffer for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), explained how trying to get any legislation done in Congress as a staffer is like trying to score in basketball with a shot clock “The time is always, now you want to get something done, and it is like you have a shot clock. What’s odd about it is you don’t always know what the time is on that shot clock. So you’re under, you’re under the shot clock without any information about what the time is that you’re using up before your opportunity to take the shot expires,” said Mersigner.
Adam Minehardt, Head of Public Policy for Chainlink Labs, and a former Hill staffer as well, commented he was, “…hopeful that the shutdown maybe really focuses staff attention on market structure.” According to Minehardt, some Congressional offices move to different work schedules, go remote, or even close down. Minehardt highlighted meetings and access may be limited. ”So just from a practical matter, you may not have regular access to staff like you did before. I think all Hill staff, for the most part, will be deemed essential, but where they work and how accessible they are is a different thing,” said Minehardt.
Mersigner pointed out that, while she hoped the shutdown would be over, Lummis and the Senate Banking Committee could have a markup of the bill even with a shutdown in place. According to Mersinger, the waiting for movement on market structure is currently with the Senate Agriculture Committee, that still needs to share its draft of market structure legislation. Senate Ag has oversight over the CFTC.
Market Structure Negotiations: Defining Digital Assets
Mersinger emphasized that one foundational question still needs to be ironed out in the market structure bill. Mersinger described the matter as one of, “…basic principles—how do you define digital assets, and what is a security and what is a commodity—that is still very much a live issue.” The Senate introduced a hybrid approach on how to definie digital assets that was very different than the Clarity Act passed by the House. Mersinger stated, “It seems like a simple solution, like you should just be able to look at something and call [a token] one or the other, but the laws that make those determinations just don’t work for digital assets. So they [Congress] will have to create a new test, and that test has been controversial.”
Minehardt stated his hope that, “…this would be a short shutdown and we can get things back on track rather quickly, because we do think all the ingredients are there. The White House has been excellent. Treasury has been excellent. Right across the board, the regulators have great great and obviously, we have a largely sympathetic ear on the hill. So so yes, maybe a temporary pause as we all figure out what this means, but hopefully it’s a short lived shutdown, and we can get things back on track pretty quickly.”
“The time is always now when you want to get something done,” said Mersinger. My experience on the Hill is always, if somebody said, ‘we’ll do this later,’ that meant it was never going to happen,” she said. “Right now, the opportunity is to get this done while momentum is strong.” But the legislative shot clock does run down at the end of the year.”
Bipartisan Momentum
Ji Kim, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, said the broader stakes go beyond Washington’s procedural slowdown. “Government shutdowns hurt American families, workers, and businesses, and risk stalling bipartisan progress in Congress. We’ve seen meaningful steps forward on digital assets, and now is the time to keep that momentum moving for market structure for consumers and U.S. leadership.” Indeed, with the Genius Act passing Congress in a largely bipartisan fashion and then enacted into law by Trump, seeing the Democrats work together with Republicans on the framework is critical, and necessary for the Senate to even consider a market structure bill. A dozen Democratic Senators put out their own version of a framework for a crypto market structure bill in September.
Mersinger confirmed that 2025 represents a critical window. “We have a good economy, the digital asset economy is doing well, and there’s real desire among the players in this space to have the right federal framework in place,” she said. “If we wait for another crisis like FTX, that’s when bad laws get written. Now’s the time to get the best product out of Congress.”