Policy at Consensus Miami: State of Crypto

White House adviser Patrick Witt said it’s possible the Clarity Act becomes law by July 4 while Senator Kirsten Gillibrand pushed for an ethics provision in the market structure bill. Consensus Miami 2026 wrapped up with a fiery debate on the role of prediction markets, and a lot otherwise happened at our first conference in the Sunshine State.

CoinDesk also released the results of a survey it commissioned of 1,000 registered voters on their views toward crypto heading into the 2026 election.

PS: I’ll be at the Bermuda Digital Finance Forum next week. Let’s catch up if you’re there.

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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:

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.

Voters did overwhelmingly say that they did not want senior government officials to have ties to crypto business interests, a majority said they did not feel comfortable with President Donald Trump’s administration overseeing crypto (though just 17% of voters said they knew he and his family had co-founded World Liberty Financial). Voters also overwhelmingly favored banks to crypto projects when asked which was more likely to bring them financial services.

You can read our articles on this data below:

Crypto is at bottom of U.S. voters’ priorities heading into elections, CoinDesk survey shows

U.S. voters don’t trust Trump administration to oversee crypto sector, CoinDesk poll finds

Americans still prefer banks over crypto for financial access, CoinDesk’s survey shows

Thursday

• 14:30 UTC (10:30 a.m. ET) The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold a markup hearing to advance the Clarity Act.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!