Dozens of crypto groups have asked President Donald Trump to help them with policy initiatives his administration can pursue as Congress continues to negotiate next steps on market structure legislation that has been the sector’s priority in Washington.
The letter, led by the newly formed 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, particularly the Senate’s talks on the details of its bill that could eventually be a response to the House Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, have been delayed well beyond the initial timelines offered by Trump and his legislative allies. But during that process, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have embarked on a series of crypto policy activities.
The industry called on the president to ensure “that developers of permissionless, source-available interfaces and protocols are not subject to enforcement while related rulemaking continues,” and that the SEC and CFTC should protect individuals’ ability to self-custody their crypto assets. And the groups called for protection across multiple agencies for decentralized finance (DeFi) innovations.
The letter, further signed by a number of crypto companies, projects and investment firms including Uniswap, Paradigm and FalconX, also asked for a number of tax considerations from the Internal Revenue Service, including guidance clarifying that rewards from mining and staking should not be taxed until the assets are sold and that small profits generated from the purchase of goods or services should be ignored as taxable events.
Many of the tax-related requests are similar to legislative provisions proposed by lawmakers such as Sen. Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who chairs 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 cryptocurrency investors, users, and builders,” the letter said, addressing directly Trump, who has been a strong advocate for the advancement of cryptocurrencies and is financially tied to a number of business ventures in the sector. The industry said it can help with “a strong whole-of-government approach to cryptocurrencies to achieve its goal of making the United States the crypto capital of the world.”
The industry is also requesting that the Department of Justice end any search for “developers of DeFi technology, including open source software protocols that are decentralized and permissionless in liability matters.” The Department of Justice successfully prosecuted the developers of cryptocurrency mixers Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, and the developers of the latter were sentenced to at least four years in prison each.
