- Trump’s election promises a major policy shift in favor of cryptocurrencies.
- Republicans plan key crypto legislation within first 100 days.
- The SEC rule could change immediately after the inauguration.
The United States is catching up.
While other countries rushed to create their own bespoke laws for crypto, legislative disinterest, gridlock and crackdowns from regulators meant there was no such progress in the world’s largest economy .
That could soon change: President-elect Donald Trump has said he will make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”
“From now on, the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry,” he promised at a Bitcoin conference in July.
Indeed, the next chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, Arkansas Republican French Hill, is one of the most pro-crypto lawmakers in Washington.
So far, Trump’s choices of regulators and advisers have either ties to the industry or have spoken favorably about crypto.
The US election result has investors betting on a crypto gold rush.
“There is a lot of optimism about the new administration,” said crypto lawyer Moishe Peltz. DL News.
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But, he added: “Even though the mood has changed, there still isn’t a lot of concrete guidance on what you can and can’t do. »
Crypto watchers should mark their calendars for three dates in 2025 that will be crucial as Trump regains power in Washington.
January 3: The 119th Congress meets
Republicans will control both houses of the next Congress and can immediately begin pursuing their policy goals.
That includes vetting the people Trump has nominated to lead federal departments and agencies, although there is no guarantee Congress will do so before his inauguration.
“They usually go to high-profile secretaries first,” such as the secretaries of State and Defense, said Miller Whitehouse-Levine, head of the cryptocurrency advocacy group DeFi Education Fund. DL News.
Crypto executives and investors have high hopes for several Trump nominees, including Paul Atkins, the new president’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.
But it may be a while before he takes office – his predecessor, current SEC Chairman and crypto bogeyman Gary Gensler, only assumed the role in April 2021, three months after Biden took office.
Another crypto-friendly candidate who could win Senate approval sooner is hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick to lead the Treasury Department.
Cantor Fitzgerald CEO – and Tether investor – Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, will also be high on the list.
January 20: Trump inauguration
There are things the administration will be able to do immediately after Trump takes office, Whitehouse-Levine said.
This includes adding or completely removing an executive order that Biden issued in 2022. The executive order has angered some in the industry due to its focus on the risks of crypto, rather than its potential benefits .
It was also the day Gensler resigned as head of the SEC. His departure could bring dramatic and immediate change.
“The SEC could immediately repeal SAB 121, which does not require notice or comment or anything like that,” Whitehouse-Levine said.
Critics say Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, an obscure accounting guidance issued by the SEC staff in 2021, makes safeguarding large amounts of crypto – an activity known as custody – financially impossible for big banks.
In effect, this requires publicly traded banks to record crypto assets as liabilities on their balance sheets.
Congress voted to eliminate SAB 121 in 2024, but Biden vetoed the effort.
April 30: End of Trump’s first 100 days
Congressman Hill recently said that Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalise intends to pass a major crypto bill within Trump’s first 100 days.
Specifically, the two men will pursue a Market Structure Bill: one that broadly outlines how crypto should be regulated in the United States.
The House passed such a bill in 2024. It was called FIT 21, and its passage was praised by many in the industry.
Co-sponsor Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican, said the bill was written to end the “food fight” between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, both of which were vying to become the main crypto regulator in the United States.
Regulators tend to deny that a turf war is raging between them.
“This is the most important moment in crypto policy and legislation in U.S. history thus far,” Rashan Colbert, head of policy at dYdX Trading, previously said. DL News.
The bipartisan vote included a significant number of Democrats and indicated that Congress, like the crypto industry, was eager to save digital assets from their legal limbo.
Others in the industry, however, were vehemently opposed to going any further.
“This bill was an industry compromise, but it was passed under duress,” Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, said during a recent webinar.
“This is bad for DeFi because it requires exchanges to collect personal information from users who purchase small-cap tokens, and I think Republican leaders will tear up this bill and start again.”
Republicans also said they intend to introduce a major stablecoin bill in the next Congress.
The problem is that they will only have a very slim majority in the House.
“No one has any idea what they’re going to be able to accomplish next year,” Whitehouse-Levine said.
“There are many, many priorities on the Republican caucus’ agenda, and it’s less about whether crypto will be a priority in the next Congress, and more about how many other higher priorities will take up time and how effective it is. can Congress be?
Whitehouse-Levine says there are other bills less broad in scope but no less important to the industry that have a better chance of passing in 2025, such as Minnesota Rep. Tom’s Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act Emmer.
This bill would assert that crypto developers and service providers who do not hold user funds are not money transmitters.
“If there is controversy around these other two bills,” Whitehouse-Levine said, Emmer’s “might be more ripe for movement.”
Aleks Gilbert is DL News” DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Email aleks@dlnews.com.
