Dozens of crypto groups asked President Donald Trump to help them with the policy initiatives his administration may push through as Congress continues to negotiate the next steps in the market structure legislation that has been the sector’s Washington priority.
The letter, led by the newly 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.”
The legislative effort — particularly the Senate’s deliberations on the details of its bill, which could ultimately be a response to the House Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — has been delayed far beyond the original deadlines offered by Trump and his allies with lawmakers. But during that process, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have launched a number of cryptopolicy efforts.
The industry asked the president to ensure “that developers of open-source, permissionless protocols and front-ends are not subject to enforcement while related rulemaking continues,” and that the SEC and CFTC should protect people’s ability to self-manage their crypto assets. And the groups called for cross-agency protections for decentralized finance (DeFi) innovations.
The letter – additionally signed by a number of crypto companies, 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 the assets are sold, and that small gains triggered by goods or services should be ignored as taxation events.
Many of the tax-related issues are similar to legislation proposed by lawmakers such as Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who heads the Senate Banking Committee’s crypto subcommittee.
“In just the first year of your presidency, the Trump administration and Congress have opened up unprecedented opportunities for crypto investors, users and builders,” said the letter, which directly addressed Trump, who has been a strong proponent of crypto promotion and is financially tied to a number of business ventures in the sector. The industry said he can help with “a robust whole-of-government approach on crypto to achieve your goal of making America the crypto capital of the world.”
The industry is also requesting an end to any pursuit by the Department of Justice of “developers of DeFi technology, including open source software protocols, that are decentralized and permissionless in matters of civil liability.” The DOJ has successfully prosecuted developers of the Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet cryptomixes, with the latter’s developers being sentenced to at least four years in prison each.
