U.S. Senate Sets Watershed Markup for Jan 15

On January 12, 2026, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs signaled a decisive end to “regulation by enforcement.”

Following months of negotiation, the committee announced a high-stakes markup for January 15 regarding a comprehensive crypto market structure bill. This legislative package is being hailed as the “final bridge” required for the formal establishment of a U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

The battle over bank-like stablecoins

A central pillar of the new negotiations is a proposal by Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD). She aims to solve a critical friction point: allowing regulated exchanges to pay transaction-based rewards on dollar-pegged stablecoins while strictly barring programs that pay interest on idle tokens. This distinction is designed to prevent stablecoins from becoming unregulated “shadow bank” products while still encouraging their use as a primary payment rail.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing to amend the Bank Secrecy Act to officially categorize digital commodity intermediaries as financial institutions, mandating strict anti-money laundering (AML) standards.

As Washington debates, the states are moving even faster. In Florida, Senate Bill 1038 was officially registered on January 7, proposing a state-funded Bitcoin reserve. The bill includes a strict “institutional guardrail”: only assets with a 24-month average market cap above $500 billion (currently only Bitcoin) are eligible for purchase.