Policy at Consensus Miami: State of Crypto
This was a hectic week.
PS: I’ll be at the Bermuda Digital Finance Forum next week. Let’s catch up if you’re there.
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America’s birthday?
The narrative
White House Executive Director of the President’s Council on Digital Assets Patrick Witt told the audience at Consensus Miami this week that he believed it was possible to have President Donald Trump sign the Clarity Act into law by July 4. The timeline would require a markup this month (which seems very possible), four weeks for the Senate to merge the Banking and Agriculture bills (technically possible), a few weeks for reconciliation with the House (also technically possible) and the House vote (will depend on the House) and finally, the part where the president signs the bill.
Beyond Witt, we heard from various industry participants and policymakers at Consensus Miami. Catch up below.
Why it matters
Look, if you’ve read this newsletter for more than a few weeks, you know the Clarity Act has taken center stage for the last several months. Maybe it’ll happen and we can move on to other things. Maybe not. But there does seem to be more momentum now than there has been in weeks, and so we’ll see — I imagine quite soon — what that means.
Breaking it down
Consensus this year had a number of other sessions with lawmakers, policymakers and lawyers weighing in on everything from what the Clarity Act needs (ethics provisions, per Senator Kirsten Gillibrand) to whether or not prediction markets are gambling (we did not reach a conclusion but it was an excellent debate!).
Some highlights:
- Aave to expand collateral and listing standards after KelpDAO exploit
- CZ floats Binance.US revival to give U.S. users access to global crypto liquidity
- Tether executive warns the 2026 midterms could have ‘seismic impact’ on crypto industry
- Stablecoins have their ‘permission slip.’ Now comes the hard part.
- Donald Trump Jr. denies rumors World Liberty Financial is falling apart
- Wall Street’s clearinghouse seeks ‘high-performance’ blockchains to tokenize corporate actions
- U.S. Bitcoin Reserve update coming in ‘next few weeks,” White House adviser says
CoinDesk also released the results of a survey of registered voters it commissioned from April 21-27. We found that while voters generally don’t care about crypto leading into the 2026 midterm election when facing other issues like the economy and healthcare. This likely isn’t a surprise to anyone.
