The members of the Cryptocurrency Lawyers Association have outlined practical ways for the new Trump administration to create the best environment for cryptocurrency development.
Source: CoinDesk
Translation: Bai Shui, Golden Finance
Preface
Over 20 lawyers working in the cryptocurrency industry have written an open letter outlining how the incoming Trump administration can create a favorable legal environment for cryptocurrency development. This letter was exclusively published by CoinDesk and covers regulatory oversight by the SEC and CFTC, potential legislation for managing stablecoins and DeFi, as well as tax cuts and streamlined procedures.
Here is the original text of the letter:
Dear President-elect Trump:
Last year, you delivered a keynote speech at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, promising to make the United States the world capital of cryptocurrency if re-elected. As you return to the presidency this Monday, we, as practicing members of the Cryptocurrency Lawyers Association, write to recommend regulatory policies that will help you achieve this goal.
The United States, like cryptocurrency, is fundamentally based on individual freedom and is naturally positioned to lead global development. Unfortunately, U.S. regulators have so far refused to apply existing laws to digital assets and the blockchain behind them (even refusing to explain why), creating an unfavorable business environment that has forced many entrepreneurs and developers to move overseas.
To unleash the creativity of Americans and address the neglect of the blockchain industry, we recommend that you pursue the following forward-looking policies in three areas: support for U.S. companies; promotion of cryptocurrency values such as privacy, disintermediation, and decentralization; and fostering a favorable business environment domestically.
Support for U.S. Businesses
The cryptocurrency industry has already produced a range of mature and emerging use cases, including digital gold, stablecoins, permissionless payments, decentralized finance, real-world assets, decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), and more. Many of these use cases are being responsibly advanced in the U.S. by companies such as Coinbase, Circle, and Consensys, as well as developers contributing to the open-source decentralized infrastructure for cryptocurrency. To continue competing with international rivals, these parties need clear rules and appropriate regulatory guidance.
General Rules
Token issuance and secondary market sales are at the core of the crypto economy, subject to the regulatory authority of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), with confusing and overlapping jurisdictions. Market structure legislation should clearly delineate the jurisdiction of primary regulatory bodies and specify when assets enter and exit that jurisdiction.
In this regard, Congress should avoid allowing U.S. securities laws to be applied too broadly, as the SEC has done. Tokens driven by open-source software and consensus mechanisms, which have minimal reliance on centralized participants in other respects, should not be considered securities, as there is no legal relationship defined by securities law between token holders and "issuers." Similarly, crypto assets like art NFTs (merely digital artworks) and non-investment activities such as staking and lending Bitcoin should also fall outside the jurisdiction of securities law.
Congress should be bold. This means not being constrained by previous legislative efforts like FIT21, which were formed in an earlier political environment and produced unintended consequences. It also means leveraging the regulatory experiences of other countries, such as the EU's MiCA framework, while avoiding their pitfalls to chart a unique and fearless path forward for the U.S.
Specific Industries
In addition to advocating for general rules, your administration should urge Congress and relevant agencies to address specific issues that are strategically important to the crypto industry and the nation.
Stablecoins. With a current market capitalization exceeding $200 billion, stablecoins are the lifeblood of the digital asset ecosystem. They are increasingly recognized within frameworks like stablecoin standards and by national regulators, necessitating comprehensive legislation for their issuance and management to ensure they are transparently supported and do not threaten financial stability. Regulation supporting stablecoins benefits consumers and promotes national interests. Similar to the Eurodollar, stablecoins typically denominated in dollars reinforce the dollar's status as the global reserve currency and increase demand for U.S. Treasury securities held by issuers.
TradFi Integration. The unprecedented success of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs indicates that cryptocurrencies have begun to integrate with traditional finance. Regulatory policies should ensure a safe and orderly integration, allowing consumers to access trustworthy custodial services. This requires amending or repealing biased SEC accounting standards (such as SAB 121) and custodial rules. But it should not stop there. Supportive innovation policies in this area should also promote the tokenization of traditional financial assets like stocks, bonds, or real estate into blockchain-based tokens. The resulting benefits include increased liquidity, fractional ownership, and faster settlement times, which will strengthen U.S. capital markets and ensure they remain the most developed and innovative markets in the world.
DeFi. Decentralized finance has the potential to modernize the global financial system and bring value to ordinary Americans by eliminating costly financial intermediaries. You should not allow vested interests and alarmism to prevent the U.S. from becoming a world leader in the DeFi space. In this regard, regulation targeting centralized participants like exchanges and issuers must be crafted to avoid inadvertently capturing and crippling the still-nascent DeFi ecosystem.
Promoting Innovation through Commitment to Crypto Values
To promote cryptocurrency innovation, regulatory policies must respect the values of cryptocurrency, including privacy, disintermediation, and decentralization. This commitment generates two key regulatory principles. First, where traditional analogs exist, regulation should not impose a greater burden on cryptocurrencies. Second, regulation should evolve in the absence of traditional analogs.
When to Treat Cryptocurrency Equally with Traditional Assets and Instruments
The first principle affects products like self-custody wallets, which allow users to hold and manage their own private keys. Since these tools are analogous to physical wallets used for personal asset management, they should not be treated as anything different—i.e., as financial intermediaries for regulatory oversight and monitoring purposes. You do not need to complete KYC to deposit cash into a physical wallet; the same should apply to storing tokens in a digital wallet.
Similar logic applies to the taxation of block rewards. Americans mining or validating blockchain transactions are creating new property, just as farmers grow crops in the field. However, the IRS currently taxes their income. This differential treatment should be abolished.
When to Differentiate Cryptocurrency
The second principle requires regulators to resist placing cryptocurrency participants and activities within legacy frameworks that are incompatible with cryptocurrency. Doing so undermines the cryptocurrency ecosystem, pushes the industry overseas, and erodes the rule of law.
Unfortunately, this is the path chosen by many U.S. regulators.
The IRS has begun treating the front end of cryptocurrency as "brokers" without statutory authority. The Department of Justice has started charging non-custodial wallet developers with violations of unlicensed money transfer regulations, despite its long-standing policy being the opposite. The U.S. Treasury has approved the smart contracts of the privacy mixer Tornado Cash, even though it is neither a foreign entity nor property, but merely code. (The appellate court overturned this sanction.)
Without diminishing the importance of government interests (tax evasion, money laundering, and national security), we believe that the government's approach in each case is misguided in terms of innovation policy, and we encourage your administration to reverse these practices.
We urge regulators not to regulate digital assets and blockchain companies as they would traditional firms, but rather to collaborate with this new technological paradigm and our industry. For example, if government monitoring (KYC) in decentralized environments is actually reasonable in certain cases, regulators can utilize cross-protocol portable blockchain-based credentials that allow users to control their data (the advantage of Web3 architecture) and align with a frictionless blockchain ecosystem. Similarly, they can integrate the programmability of tokens and smart contracts to exclude sanctioned parties from the crypto economy.
Attracting Top Talent through a Favorable Business Environment
To become the preferred destination for top crypto talent, the U.S. must create a favorable business environment. Your administration can begin this process on day one.
End the de-banking of crypto companies. Your administration should direct the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and all other agencies involved in Operation Chokepoint 2.0 to immediately cease irresponsible activities aimed at de-banking the crypto industry.
Improve SEC rulemaking and enforcement. You should instruct your SEC chair to thoroughly reform the agency's approach to cryptocurrency. Over the past four years, the SEC has overstepped its authority, holding accountable reputable industry leaders like Coinbase and Consensys, regulating individual developers and users (in its redefinition of rulemaking on exchanges), and taking enforcement actions against wallet providers. Now is the time for the SEC to correct this harmful practice and begin constructive engagement with the crypto industry, while focusing on preventing fraud rather than stifling financial speculation, which is beneficial for innovation.
Abolish punitive tax rules. Your administration should eliminate punitive tax rules that push entrepreneurs and developers overseas while leaving well-meaning taxpayers uncertain about how to calculate their tax bills. Readily available improvements include adopting current expenses for software development; tax deferral for validation rewards and airdrops; a safe harbor for minimal consumption transactions (e.g., below $5,000); fair market value options for cryptocurrency investors; and the repeal of IRS reporting requirements that treat websites as brokers. Congress should also repeal the amendment to Section 6050I, which imposes burdensome (and potentially unconstitutional) reporting requirements on cryptocurrency transactions exceeding $10,000.
Reduce unnecessary red tape. In line with the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.), we urge your office to work with Congress and government agencies to reduce unnecessary red tape that restricts cryptocurrency and fintech. This includes simplifying or eliminating registration and reporting requirements for digital asset issuances that meet certain conditions, including providing necessary investor disclosures. Congress should also consider legislation to establish a unified federal money transmission licensing framework to bring clarity and efficiency to the broader fintech ecosystem.
In pursuing the above forward-looking policies, we encourage your administration to consult with industry leaders and remain sensitive to the transnational scope of the digital asset ecosystem. (We believe your establishment of a cryptocurrency committee is a positive step in this direction.) We also recommend utilizing mechanisms like regulatory sandboxes to mitigate the risk of unintended regulatory consequences.
Now is a great time for the U.S. to begin establishing its global regulatory leadership. By ensuring this, your administration will contribute to the future economic prosperity of the country and support a technology rooted in America's deep-seated values and freedoms. You should seize this opportunity.
Sincerely,
Ivo Entchev, Olta Andoni, Stephen Rutenberg, Donna Redel
The following members of the Cryptocurrency Lawyers Association also signed this letter: Mike Bacina, Joe Carlasare, Eli Cohen, Mike Frisch, Jason Gottlieb, Eric Hess, Katherine Kirkpatrick, Dan McAvoy, John McCarthy, Margaret Rosenfeld, Gabriel Shapiro, Ben Snipes, Noah Spaulding, Andrea Tinianow, Jenny Vatrenko, Collin Woodward, and Rafael Yakobi.
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