Coinbase Backs Away From Senate Crypto Bill as Bitcoin Touches $96,750 Two‑Month High

Bitcoin extended its run, tagging a fresh two‑month high while U.S. policy jolted the narrative. Coinbase withdrew support for the Senate’s crypto market structure bill ahead of a pivotal vote, flagging serious issues in the latest draft. Lawmakers pushed the vote back, and the market took it as a reminder that rulemaking remains fluid even with spot ETF inflows and healthier liquidity.

Market snapshot - BTC +2% to $96,750; ETH +2% to $3,360; SOL flat at $145; XRP -1% to $2.11 - Standouts: DCR +30%, DASH +10%, ICP +10%, ZEC +7% - XMR printed a new ATH at $800 before easing to $725

The fulcrum today is Coinbase’s move. Pulling support before a vote is a high‑signal maneuver. It suggests the current draft may harden obligations or ambiguities that could calcify around centralized intermediaries while leaving core on-chain activity exposed to conflicting interpretations. When a regulated exchange—motivated to see clear rules—steps back, it’s rarely posturing. It’s leverage.

Strategically, Coinbase is likely wagering that delay beats bad law. In practice, rushed frameworks often encode technical misunderstandings: how custody interacts with smart contract execution, where market surveillance is feasible on-chain versus where it creates honeypots, how to define decentralization without criminalizing client‑server realities that many protocols still rely on. If those seams get drafted poorly, capital formation migrates, developer roadmaps shift to avoid gray zones, and liquidity fragments.

Investors recognize that uncertainty. You can see it in the microstructure: majors held gains, but leadership rotated into idiosyncratic names (DCR, ICP) while privacy assets printed extremes (XMR’s ATH to $800, then a sharp retrace to $725). That pattern often reflects selective risk‑taking alongside headline risk hedging.

There’s also a governance undercurrent. An industry heavyweight contesting a bill signals to staffers that technical review isn’t done. It can nudge a more iterative process: narrow the perimeter of “market structure,” clarify registration pathways for centralized entities, and avoid retroactive liability that chills open‑source development. None of this is flashy, but clean definitions change the cost of capital. Sloppy ones tax it.

Around the ecosystem - Zcash: The Zcash Foundation said the SEC’s investigation has concluded, with no action. That removes a persistent overhang for privacy‑preserving research and grants ZEC some breathing room (+7% among leaders). - Ripple: Secured a Luxembourg license, extending its European footprint. That’s a practical bridge for payment corridors as MiCA regimes come online. - Pakistan: Partnered with World Liberty Financial to explore stablecoin rails for remittances and cross‑border payments—an area where on‑chain settlement can compress fees and settlement times if compliance is embedded. - Human Rights Foundation: Awarded nearly $1.3M in Bitcoin grants to projects focused on human rights and freedom tech. Grants like these sustain infrastructure in jurisdictions where permissionless access matters most. - Figure: Rolled out a public equity network to issue stocks and related assets on-chain. If secondary liquidity and transfer agents plug in, this could pressure legacy record‑keeping and corporate actions to modernize. - FTX: Prepared another round of creditor distributions, guiding the next payout for March 31. Each cleared tranche reduces tail risk for claimants and counterparties still normalizing exposure. - Sui: Recovered after a nearly six‑hour network stall. Reliability incidents remain the quiet tax on developer confidence; restarts can be forgiven, patterns cannot.

The market isn’t rallying on policy clarity; it’s rallying despite policy drift. Coinbase’s decision sharpens that point. If the bill returns with tighter, technically coherent language—especially around exchange registration, token categorization, and disclosures that make sense on-chain—this rally gets a sturdier foundation. Until then, expect liquidity to reward assets with clearer regulatory paths and penalize those that depend on interpretive slack.