On January 21, 2026, Chairman John Boozman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry released updated legislative text on crypto market structure titled the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act. In November 2025, Senate Ag previously issued a bipartisan discussion draft building upon the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (CLARITY Act) passed by the House of Representatives last July. The updated text, while not bipartisan like the discussion draft, adopts much of that draft and focuses more on digital asset intermediaries, but leaves open the treatment of DeFi protocols. The definitions align with the House’s CLARITY Act, incorporating blockchain and DeFi terminology and expanding the digital commodity scope to include network tokens and memecoins, with exclusions for groups under common control or acting in concert.
RULEMAKING: The legislative text preserves joint rulemaking by the SEC and CFTC for exchanges and intermediaries, mixed digital asset transactions, portfolio margining transactions, and conflicts of interest, and adds rulemaking on delisting and on leveraged, margined, or financed retail digital commodity transactions. The text maintains a deadline of no later than 18 months after enactment for rules to be promulgated. REGISTRATION FRAMEWORK: It preserves the registration regime but provides expedited registration and provisional status with the CFTC, to be completed no later than 180 days after enactment, with provisional status lasting until 270 days after the final effective date of the rulemaking. Those in provisional status would be permitted to conduct digital asset transactions before the date of registration until the rulemaking on definitions is completed and effective.
DEVELOPER PROTECTIONS AND RESOURCES: Although the bracketed treatment of noncontrolling blockchain developers is excluded from the legislative text, a software developer protection section was added; software developers engaging in activities such as compiling network transactions, providing computation work, and delivering a user interface to read blockchain data are excluded from coverage, though they may be subject to anti-fraud, anti-manipulation, or false reporting enforcement. In the Resources for Implementation section, fees are to be collected from registered digital commodity brokers and dealers, digital commodity exchanges, and qualified digital asset custodians on initial filing and then annually, distinguishing these registrants from agricultural and energy market participants. CONCLUSION: The updated text relies heavily on the discussion draft and maintains its focus on digital asset intermediaries, with limited treatment of DeFi compared to the Banking Bill, but shows early signs of incorporating portions of that banking legislation and the CLARITY Act. A markup of the Senate Ag Committee’s legislative text was scheduled for a hearing on January 29, 2026, and, if enacted, it would need reconciliation with the Senate Banking Bill and then with the House’s CLARITY Act.
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