A minority of the minority in the Senate has said what it wants in market structure legislation, a first for a caucus that has mostly stayed mum.

Why it matters: Democrats so far have lacked a coherent message on an industry with an outsized impact on American politics.

• A policy conversation has now begun.

Driving the news: On Tuesday, 12 Democrats put out a framework for advancing legislation around the creation and trading of crypto assets.

• "I want to thank my colleagues across the aisle for their constructive digital asset market structure framework," Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), one of Capitol Hill's most vocal crypto advocates, wrote on X.
• "Meaningful legislation takes intentional collaboration & discussion. This is a strong start," she added.

Between the lines: When you dig in, it looks like there are some important tensions between the framework and Republican discussion draft for a bill.

• One point that jumps out is progressive decentralization.

Zoom in: The Republican discussion draft defines a path for how a company could create a token, and then later certify it no longer controls the asset.

• At that point, the token would "graduate" from securities rules and trade under CFTC oversight.

Friction point: Democrats seem to have some reservations about that approach.

• In sections two and three of their framework, the issue of required disclosures is dealt with in detail.
• Democrats clearly want disclosures to be delivered in plain language that normal people can understand, and they acknowledge that digital assets probably require quite different disclosures than traditional securities.
• But they stop short of spelling out how, or if, those assets could ever graduate from those disclosure rules and out of SEC-style oversight.

The big picture: That marks a fundamental divide.

Zoom in: Digital assets are different in a material way than assets in the traditional world.

• Without a company, you can't have a stock. Blockchains though, can create assets that no single entity controls, or where control is widely distributed.
• No one is "in charge" of Bitcoin or Ethereum, the two largest blockchains.

💭 Brady's thought bubble: There probably is a way to achieve the ongoing disclosure of the most essential facts about a given digital asset without some company needing to send papers into the SEC forever about the backgrounds of their board members.

• The question is whether or not enough lawmakers would be comfortable with such an approach that they would actually vote for legislation.

Coinbase wants the SEC to explain in court how it lost former chair Gary Gensler's texts amid a busy time for the commission, one that included the unraveling of the crypto exchange FTX.

Why it matters: The preservation of government records is a crucial tool that enables the public to understand how and why key government leaders made decisions.

Catch up quick: The SEC inspector general released a report last week that said text messages sent and received by Gensler from October 2022 to September 2023 were lost forever.

• Coinbase has been filing Freedom of Information Act cases aggressively in recent years. Against the SEC, it recently filed a case to ascertain how much money the agency spent on enforcement actions against crypto firms.
• That litigation is ongoing.

What they're saying: "The SEC failed to disclose — to the public, to FOIA requests, in our ongoing litigation — that it had destroyed these communications, " Ryan VanGrack, Coinbase's vice president for litigation, tells Axios via a spokesperson.

By the numbers: The inspector generals office determined that 56% of the messages were administrative day-to-day messages, 38% were mission critical — about real policy decisions — and 6% were personal.

What's next: "In our ongoing FOIA litigation against the SEC, we will ask the District Court to hold a hearing to conduct additional discovery on this issue and evaluate possible sanctions and other relief," VanGrack said.

💼 Stablecoin job hiring is getting fierce. (Bloomberg)

🗯️ Debate around big corporate blockchains is heating up. (The Defiant)

😵‍💫 Ark Invest sold Robinhood shares to buy digital asset treasury company Bitmine. (DL News)

I blew coworkers' minds this week when I told them the name "Terra" on the club and seats behind home plate at the Washington Nationals ballpark is not just some milquetoast generic name, but rather an artifact of the great crypto unwinding of 2022.

• The Axios editorial team held a retreat at the ballpark this week, and one of our evening events took place right there in the Terra club.

The big picture: The "Terra" brand seen all around home plate and on the outfield wall at the D.C. baseball stadium specifically refers to the ill-fated algorithmic stablecoin created by South Korean company Terraform Labs.

• Its founder pled guilty to fraud charges in August.

By the numbers: Terra paid $40 million for the naming rights in February 2022. The whole company then fell apart a few years later.

• Axios was unable to determine how long the deal was written for.

What we're watching: When and if the branding comes down.

• Considering the fact that the name is embroidered into the seats, it could be a while. In fact, the "Terra"name still shows on the digital signage, too, even though the project is long gone.

💭 Brady's thought bubble: I'm willing to bet none of the vendors around the park are accepting UST — the stablecoin that fell apart — during games, even though that was also reported as part of the deal.