With less than 24 hours to go until a make-or-break vote on the crypto industry’s long-coveted market structure bill, America’s most powerful crypto company has abruptly pulled its support for the legislation.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced Wednesday afternoon that the company—one of the industry’s most influential players in Washington—is pulling its support for the bill in its current form, just hours before it was poised to face a markup on the Senate Banking Committee.
“This version would be materially worse than the current status quo,” he added. “We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill.”
After reviewing the Senate Banking draft text over the last 48hrs, Coinbase unfortunately can’t support the bill as written.
There are too many issues, including:
- A defacto ban on tokenized equities- DeFi prohibitions, giving the government unlimited access to your financial…
The about-face comes as Coinbase and other industry stakeholders found themselves locked in a battle with the banking lobby over a key section in the bill that would have limited the ability of crypto companies to offer yield on stablecoin holdings.
One D.C. insider close to the crypto industry saw Coinbase’s bold move as a negotiation tactic aimed at getting more favorable stablecoin yield language.
“They need to make their point on rewards,” the insider told Decrypt.
But another Washington policy expert, who figured Coinbase’s move would likely derail the bill’s chances of passage, described the announcement to Decrypt as “farcically inept and entitled.”
“They are high on their own supply that they’re an important factor in the next election,” the policy expert said of Coinbase’s Wednesday announcement.
