Boozman Releases 161‑Page GOP Crypto Market Bill Assigning CFTC Authority

Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman published a 161‑page Republican draft on January 21 after bipartisan negotiations stalled. The draft assigns cash and spot trading of non‑security tokens to Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight and preserves Securities and Exchange Commission jurisdiction over securities and investment contracts. The bill requires platform registration with the CFTC, sets qualified custody standards and asset segregation rules, clarifies treatment of customer property in bankruptcy, and establishes unified trading, listing and surveillance expectations for venues. The text directs an 18‑month window for CFTC rulemaking after enactment and grants the agency fee authority and hiring flexibility. The draft includes federal preemption for market structure and trading requirements while leaving state fraud and consumer protection enforcement intact. The bill calls for joint SEC‑CFTC rulemaking to address hybrid or layered products and includes dispute‑resolution timelines for that process. Unresolved items in the draft include the scope and treatment of decentralized finance interfaces, alignment with anti‑money‑laundering and sanctions controls for self‑hosted wallets, bridges and privacy tools, and the statutory boundary between SEC and CFTC for hybrid products, with the latter deferred to joint rulemaking. The Agriculture Committee markup is scheduled for January 27 at 3 p.m. Eastern, and if the bill advances its market structure text will be reconciled with parallel Banking Committee work before any Senate floor consideration. The GOP‑only release narrows the margin for cloture on the floor and increases the likelihood of amendment votes on DeFi scope, AML integration for non‑custodial flows, and the SEC‑CFTC boundary. Banking Committee activity could slip into late February or March given competing calendars. The draft and related analysis list industry planning actions including mapping tokens and services to CFTC and SEC jurisdiction, establishing registration and custody playbooks, building data pipelines for listing and surveillance, preparing comment letters, securing board approvals for compliance budgets, and conducting vendor diligence given the statute’s 18‑month clock for CFTC rulemaking. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/policy/boozman-gop-crypto-market-bill/

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