The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry advanced—on a party-line vote during a markup hearing on Thursday—its version of legislation that would create a regulatory framework for digital assets.
The bill, referred to as the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, would grant the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary oversight of digital commodities markets such as bitcoin. It passed with support from 12 committee Republicans and was opposed by 11 Democrats.
Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Arkansas, released the 161-page bill on January 21. The bill would establish a federal regulatory framework for cryptocurrency trading, centered on a precise legal definition stating: Digital commodities are fungible digital assets that transfer peer-to-peer without intermediaries and exist on cryptographically secured ledgers.
All cryptocurrency platforms would need to register with the CFTC under one of four new categories: digital commodity broker, digital commodity custodian, digital commodity dealer or digital commodity trading facility. Each category carries distinct obligations for risk management, operational transparency and customer safeguards.
The framework excludes stablecoins, bank deposits and tokenized securities; these would remain under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as Boozman reiterated during Thursday’s markup. The bill would create a regulatory framework only for assets classified as commodities under federal law.
The Senate Committee on Banking still needs to advance its portion of the bill, which focuses on the SEC’s role in regulating digital commodities markets.
If passed out of both committees, the legislation would be combined and considered by the full Senate, with the bill serving as the Senate counterpart to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 by a somewhat bipartisan margin of 294 to 134.
However, Coinbase earlier this month criticized the bill for undermining the CFTC’s regulatory role. Opposition from the large cryptocurrency company led to delays in the Senate Banking Committee and threatened its passage. A new date has not been set for a new Banking Committee markup.
Further hurting the Senate bill’s chances were 11 amendments, all of which either failed on party lines or were withdrawn during the hearing.
The amendments mostly centered on potential conflicts of interest of government officials profiting from the cryptocurrency industry and on addressing concerns about foreign interference and digital-asset related scams.
Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, introduced an amendment that would have included provisions from the proposed Digital Asset Ethics Act, which he said, “should be the easiest amendment any of us will ever have the chance to vote on.” But Boozman said the amendment extended beyond the scope of the bill.
However, Boozman said many of the amendments had raised valid points, which were better suited to the Banking Committee’s version of the bill.
If the Banking Committee advances its version of the bill, the combined proposal would need to attract support from enough Democrats in the full Senate to secure the 60 votes needed for passage.
If passed in the Senate, the House of Representatives would then consider that version of the bill, which differs from the House-passed version. Only after both chambers pass the same bill would it go to President Donald Trump for his signature.
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Tags: asset tokenization, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Cryptocurrency, Securities and Exchange Commission