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  Enough U.S. Senate Democrats are still showing they're ready to approve a crypto market structure bill that the effort has legs, they expressed in a meeting with several crypto CEOs on Wednesday that focused on a way forward on U.S. crypto regulation.  

Digital assets business leaders had two meetings set for the same day, the first to discuss the next steps with Democrats, whose votes will be needed to lift any bill over the Senate's 60-vote threshold. The second meeting was with those lawmakers' Republican counterparts, who've been pushing a draft bill that's their answer to the House of Representatives' Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

"It's clear there's a sufficient level of Democratic support," said Chainlink CEO and co-founder Sergey Nazarov, in a statement to CoinDesk between the meetings. He said more than 10 lawmakers attended, "all very committed to investing their time and effort in making the bill a success."

Tension has been rising between the parties and within crypto circles as the chances for Senate bandwidth grow slimmer for 2025. When some Democratic legislative proposals on decentralized finance (DeFi) recently leaked, many in the industry considered the ideas a fatal stroke to market structure negotiations. Some of them made those views public.

The Democrat meeting featured some harsh language over that tension, participants said, but the policy gaps probably aren't insurmountable.

"I think that friction is transitory and will resolve soon," Nazarov said.

Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Institute, told CoinDesk in an interview that the meetings have "reset the conversation," but she said "we've got our work cut out for us" when it comes to getting the lawmakers' knowledge level up to where it needs to be to write the legislation.

The meeting between the industry leaders and Democratic lawmakers was said to be spearheaded by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who has been advocating for tailored crypto regulations for years. The Democrats showed a high interest in addressing illicit finance concerns in the legislation, Nazarov said.

After the Republican meeting, a spokesman of Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, issued a statement that Scott "calls on Democratic colleagues to immediately return to the negotiating table, engage in serious bipartisan discussions and offer substantive feedback on our bill."

With both parties and the industry back at the table this week, crypto leaders are hoping it jump starts the process. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who was set to attend both meetings, had said in a post on social media site X before the meetings that he was "excited to roll up our sleeves with key decision makers" to get the bill to President Donald Trump's desk.

After the first meeting, he posted again that the industry is "keeping the pressure on in DC" to pass a bill, and he also flagged a Stand With Crypto effort to gather support for it.

A number of hurdles remain in that process, however. The Senate Banking and Agriculture committees need to advance language to the overall Senate, and the former is the only one that's so far produced a draft. And if the Senate approves an eventual bill, it needs to return to the House for a vote there before it can move to Trump for a signature.

Crypto votes in Congress have been a bright spot in U.S. policy work, with huge, bipartisan results for the recent bill to regulate stablecoin issuers and the House's Clarity Act. But legislation has to get finished before it can win a vote.

"It's really to everyone's benefit to have the bill pass — to get the digital asset community accepted by the U.S. government," Nazarov said.

While the bill is the priority target, Smith said that failing to do it this year doesn't spell doom.

"Not all is lost if we don't get this done in the short term," she said, citing the policy work being done at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with both agencies pushing into crypto policy writing and not waiting for new authorities from Congress. "We're seeing real progress and real clarity that I think is going to be ultimately lasting."