There’s an election next month: State of Crypto

A month out from the election, and polling (and recent headlines) suggest that Democrats are currently on the upswing. A consensus poll on the site 270towin suggests that Democrats will flip the House of Representatives, but that it’s hard to tell where the Senate may land.

For what it’s worth, as of 5:00 p.m. ET on Friday, bettors on prediction market provider Kalshi suggest Democrats will flip the House and the Senate. Ditto on Polymarket.

Just to briefly lay out the stakes of the election: The makeup of the next Congress will shape how regulators are overseen, whether we get any further crypto legislation in the near-term and just what crypto companies will need to do to maintain relationships with the majority parties.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Treasury Department and other agencies will be working on rulemaking efforts over the next year, obviously Congress has a pretty big role in overseeing these regulators. The Clarity Act, in part, was intended to define how these agencies could interact with crypto, and Congress will also need to okay these regulators’ budgets next year.

We’ll also see where Congress lands on legislation. Lawmakers may take up a new market structure bill, though it’s unclear how that may go. What is more certain is that Congress will work on tax legislation. The House Ways and Means Committee passed a crypto tax bill last month on a major bipartisan basis, and Senator Steve Daines introduced a crypto tax bill to the Senate last week.