House Democrats weigh crypto market structure bill for 2027

House Democrats are discussing a 2027 crypto market-structure bill that would expand SEC oversight, according to Eleanor Terrett.

Rep. Maxine Waters’ Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights began as a 2025 amendment to the CLARITY Act. Terrett reported that Democrats could expand it into a full market-structure bill in the next Congress.

Three industry sources described the talks to her. The draft would revive the Democratic CLARITY provisions the House rejected last year, along with provisions Senate Democrats and Republicans had already agreed on before the September cloture vote killed the bill.

What does the proposal change for traders and issuers?

The draft would give the SEC a larger role supervising crypto markets, reduce the CFTC’s role and add ethics provisions restricting the crypto activities of Trump and other federal officials. Democrats had sought the ethics rules, and many observers thought they would kill the bill’s chances of becoming law.

For traders and issuers, the practical shift is a more SEC-centered supervisory map, though only if Congress advances the proposal.

That leaves Waters, the likely incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, apparently planning to write a bill rather than hold hearings. Twenty-four hours earlier, the consensus was that market structure legislation had been dead for two years. The reported talks reopen a path to try again in 2027, though they concern a draft rather than final legislation.

Markets rose, then retreated

Bitcoin fell below $76,000 Tuesday night, a seven-week low, before rising above $80,800 Wednesday afternoon, a 4% daily gain.

The post-midterm rally later retraced. A headline snapshot put BTC at $79,600, while a later market table listed it at $79,900. ETH rose 3% at $2,390, SOL gained 2% at $95, HYPE fell 5% at $81.80, and ZEC held at $1,298. INJ gained 8%, ATOM 7% and RAY 6%.

WTI fell 9% to $88 a barrel, nearly 17% on the week, as Iran’s parliament speaker said voters had “said NO TO WAR.” The Dow rose 3% and the Nasdaq 1.6% that day.

After the previous session’s rally, stock futures were mixed: the Dow gained 0.5% and the Nasdaq fell 0.7%. A later table put oil down 8% at $88 and gold up 1.5% at $4,135.

James Butterfill of CoinShares said: “For Bitcoin, real yields, dollar liquidity and ETP flows still carry more weight than the elections.” His point matters because rates, liquidity and fund flows still set the immediate trading backdrop while the policy debate remains unfinished.

Custody controls and theft claims

Coinbase said more than 99% of customer assets sit in cold storage. Its blog post, written in response to the Binance hack, described split cold-wallet keys that never fully reassemble, rate limits on cold-to-hot transfers and kill switches that take signing keys offline entirely.

ZachXBT named French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the alleged victim of a theft now exceeding $133 million, up from the $106 million he flagged Monday. Separately, Binance and Deribit revoked every API key linked to third-party trading platform SignalPlus after SignalPlus flagged a potential security issue.

A Polygon Labs validator support team member proposed a Polygon PoS hard fork. The proposal would move roughly 70.49 million POL stolen in the Polymarket and Binance hacks, worth about $6.5 million, from attackers’ addresses to recovery addresses designated by both companies.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued Kalshi over its sports-event contracts. Griffin alleges that the exchange operates an unlicensed gambling platform and bypassed state licensing requirements and taxes. The case puts prediction-market enforcement before the courts.

Tokenization and fund flows

Morgan Stanley converted U.S. equities and Treasuries into tokenized form through the DTCC Tokenization Service. The service launched October 28 on the Canton Network and DTCC’s private Besu chain.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded $74 million in net Wednesday inflows, while ETH ETFs took in $53 million, breaking the prior outflow streak. Strategy’s STRC reached its $100 par value for the first time since May, allowing the company to buy 191 BTC.

Hyperliquid led onchain protocols by daily revenue at $3.67 million. Pump.fun generated $1.71 million, and Uniswap produced $364,000.

Meme and NFT markets stayed mixed

DOGE and SHIB each rose 1%. PEPE, PENGU, SPX and BONK each fell 2%, while TRUMP dropped 15%. Robinhood-chain tokens mostly declined: Pons fell 1% to $145 million, Cashcat fell 3% to $102 million, and AI fell 12% to $52 million. Standard rose 12%, and Ubik gained 40%.

On Solana, HIGH was up 12x, GTA 76x and Rambo 600%. Cards gained 20% after an Upbit listing. NFT markets were mixed. Punks held at 30.4 ETH, BAYC rose 1% to 5.64 ETH, and Pudgy fell 4% to 2.25 ETH. Wired gained 30%, while Milady rose 5%.

The next concrete test is whether lawmakers turn the discussions into formal text and can move the revised package toward the stated 2027 passage target.