<p>Looking Ahead to Consensus’ Policy Summit: The Current Landscape of Cryptocurrency
Policy debates are growing increasingly crucial each year, and this year’s discussions are no exception.
As many of you who read this newsletter know, Congress has been engaged in extensive debates over market structure legislation for the past few months. However, crypto policy extends far beyond this single topic, covering areas such as taxation, decentralized finance regulations, midterm elections, state-level actions, and much more. CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference, scheduled for next month, will delve into each of these topics in detail.
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Miami Conversations
This newsletter has previously highlighted how pivotal policy changes regarding digital assets have become. Last year marked a significant milestone when U.S. President Donald Trump signed the first major crypto-specific legislation. Regulators have entirely shifted their approach to enforcement actions. Congress has spent the past few months debating not the broad outlines of a market structure bill or whether one will even pass, but the intricate details of issues like the treatment of stablecoin yield.
In other words: Crypto has arrived.
This was true last year, to be fair. The crypto industry, fresh off its electoral wins in 2024, took a victory lap as bitcoin’s
So what’s next? The industry is still pushing for tax reform, including a de minimis exemption for crypto transactions, hoping the market structure bill will become law without overly burdening the industry and — of course — looking ahead to November, when the U.S. will pick the next Congress.
We’ll be picking up these threads next month at Consensus Miami, our annual shindig bringing together basically everyone.
You’ll hear from leading lawmakers like Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Ashley Moody, regulators like CFTC Chairman Mike Selig and the White House point man on crypto Patrick Witt, and Congressional staffers across the three-day conference. Congressman Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), who recently introduced a new version of the Parity Act to address crypto taxations, will participate in a discussion about the bill. We’ll also host a meetup for folks interested in chatting about the election or just generally about the policy landscape.
And we are bringing back the Policy &amp; Regulation Summit: an entire day, and an entire stage, dedicated to exploring key policy and regulatory issues in-depth.
The policy summit is designed to explore some of the biggest questions lawmakers, regulators, compliance officers and/or builders have to answer right now, including whether or how decentralized finance can comply with anti-money laundering rules, how to deal with taxes in the new 1099-DA era, what the deal is with the Clarity Act and how states are approaching this sector.
We’ll have an entire series of sessions focused on the 2026 midterm election, including how the crypto industry is engaging with the election and what we can expect next year when the new Congress takes over.
Along the way, we’ll hear from folks deeply embedded in the policymaking process, such as SEC Crypto Task Force chief Taylor Lindman, former IRS officials Seth Wilks and Raj Mukherjee and the National Futures Association’s Lucy Hynes, among so many others.
We’re going to close the Policy Summit — and all of Consensus really — with a debate on one of the biggest topics in the country right now: prediction markets. Are they just gambling? Or are prediction markets a novel financial instrument? And who should regulate these products?
These questions are likely to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, but we’re going to preview the arguments for you on May 7. Come on through (discount code in the link) and say hi.
This week
Tuesday
— 14:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. ET) The Senate Banking Committee will hold the nomination hearing for Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump’s pick to helm the Federal Reserve.
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!</p>