Dozens of crypto groups have asked President Donald Trump to help with policy initiatives his administration can implement while Congress continues to negotiate the next steps in market structure legislation that is the industry’s top priority in Washington.
The letter, led by the recently established Solana Policy Institute and signed by others including the Blockchain Association, the Digital Chamber, the Crypto Council for Innovation and the DeFi Education Fund, focused on what they described as “quick wins to complement legislative efforts.”
Legislative efforts — including the Senate’s discussions over the details of its bill that could eventually be a response to the House of Representatives’ Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — have been delayed well beyond the initial deadlines proposed by Trump and his legislative allies. But in the process, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have embarked on a number of crypto policies.
The industry called on the President to ensure “that developers of source-available permissionless protocols and front-ends are not subject to enforcement actions while associated rulemaking is underway,” and that the SEC and CFTC should protect people’s ability to self-custody their crypto assets. And the groups called for protections within various agencies for decentralized finance (DeFi) innovations.
The letter – also signed by a number of crypto businesses, projects and investment firms, including Uniswap, Paradigm and FalconX – also called for a number of tax considerations from the Internal Revenue Service, including guidance clarifying that mining and staking rewards should not be taxed until assets are sold and that small gains generated when purchasing goods or services should be ignored as taxable events.
Many of the tax-related demands are similar to legislative provisions proposed by lawmakers such as Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who leads the Senate Banking Committee’s crypto subcommittee.
“In the first year of your presidency, the Trump administration and Congress have opened up unprecedented opportunities for crypto investors, users, and builders,” the letter said, speaking directly to Trump, who has been a vocal advocate for crypto progress and is financially tied to a number of business ventures in the sector. Industry said it can help with “a robust whole-of-government approach to crypto to achieve your goal of making America the crypto capital of the world.”
The industry is also calling for an end to any Justice Department lawsuits against “developers of DeFi technology, including open source software protocols that are decentralized and without civil liability clearance.” The DOJ successfully prosecuted the developers of crypto mixers Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, with the developers of the latter receiving at least four years in prison each.
