Dozens of crypto groups petitioned President Donald Trump to help them out with the policy initiatives his administration can get done while Congress keeps negotiating next steps on the market structure legislation that’s been the sector’s Washington priority.
The letter, led by the recently established Solana Policy Institute and signed by others including the Blockchain Association, Digital Chamber, Crypto Council for Innovation and DeFi Education Fund, focused on what they described as “quick wins to complement legislative efforts.”
The legislative efforts — most notably the Senate’s talks over the details of its bill that could eventually be an answer to the House of Representatives’ Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — have been delayed well beyond the initial deadlines offered by Trump and his lawmaker allies. But during that process, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have embarked on a number of crypto policy pursuits.
The industry asked the president to make sure “that developers of source-available, permissionless protocols and front-ends are not subject to enforcement while related rulemaking proceeds,” and that the SEC and CFTC should protect people’s ability to self-custody their crypto assets. And the groups called for protections across various agencies for decentralized finance (DeFi) innovations.
The letter — additionally signed by an array of crypto businesses, projects and investment firms including Uniswap, Paradigm and FalconX — also called for a number of taxation considerations by the Internal Revenue Service, including guidance clarifying that mining and staking rewards shouldn’t be taxed until the assets are sold and that small gains triggered in the purchase of goods or services should be ignored as taxable events.
Many of the tax-related asks are similar to legislative provisions proposed by such lawmakers as Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican that leads the Senate Banking Committee’s crypto subcommittee.
“In just the first year of your presidency, the Trump administration and Congress have unlocked unprecedented opportunity for crypto investors, users, and builders,” the letter said, directly addressing Trump, who has been a strong advocate for crypto advancement and is financially tied to a number of business ventures in the sector. The industry said he can help out with “a robust whole-of-government approach on crypto to achieve your objective of making America the crypto capital of the world.”
The industry is also requesting an end to any Department of Justice pursuit of “developers of DeFi technology, including open-source software protocols that are decentralized and permissionless on matters of civil liability.” The DOJ successfully prosecuted developers of crypto mixers Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, with the latter’s developers being sentenced to at least four years in prison each.