Lawmakers are pushing back their timeline for passing digital assets market structure legislation in the latest sign policymakers are struggling to honor their pro-crypto election promises.
During the U.S. Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets’ inaugural meeting on Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said a bi-partisan group of pro-crypto legislators is aiming to pass a comprehensive framework targeting the industry by the end of this year.
That’s several months later than Republican policymakers’ previously announced timeline for advancing critical crypto market structure reforms through Congress.
“Many members of the Senate are still trying to wrap their heads around ‘what is a Bitcoin;’ ‘what is a digital asset,’ ‘what is a stablecoin,’” Lummis said at the meeting. “I hope we can get … legislation to President Trump for his signature this year.”
Newly appointed Crypto Czar David Sacks vowed earlier this month to push Congress to enshrine digital assets market structure reforms and other pro-crypto initiatives into law within the first 100 days of President Trump's second administration.
But during Wednesday's meeting, lawmakers and industry experts expressed less urgency to speed-run such efforts.
Instead, attendees spent much of the meeting discussing existing securities regulations and stablecoin bills such as the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 Act introduced earlier this month.
Their distancing from Sack's 100-day timeline comes amid politicians' broader retreat from their pro-crypto election cycle promises.
Efforts to establish a Bitcoin stockpile in the U.S. Treasury—a focal point of President Trump's pro-crypto campaign platform—are still in their infancy.
The proposal also appears to have lost steam among policymakers on Capitol Hill, with attendees at Wednesday’s Senate Banking subcommittee meeting hardly broaching the subject of a U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Meanwhile, three bills aimed to create Bitcoin reserves at the state level have failed this year.
To be sure, the Trump administration and its allies have made good on some of their pre-election promises to the crypto community.
Trump pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Albright from prison during his first few days in office, and he appointed pro-crypto regulator Paul Atkins to lead the Securities Exchange Commission ahead of his inauguration in January.
Investors’ sentiments toward crypto reached fever-pitch in the lead-up to President Trump's return to the White House, catapulting Bitcoin and other tokens to all-time highs.
However, those prices have since fallen.
Bitcoin is down 12.6% on the week to $84,000, while blue-chip tokens such as Solana and Ethereum have also posted double-digit losses over the same period, CoinGecko data shows.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair