There’s an election next month: State of Crypto

Congress is gone from Washington for the final pre-election recess, and it’s time to take stock of what’s going on ahead of November.

The U.S. is holding its midterm election in a month, on November 3. The results will determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the House of Representatives and the Senate, and that in turn will determine what next year looks like for crypto (and, I suppose, other) industries.

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The narrative

The midterm election is on Nov. 3, 2026. As of Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, polls suggest that Democrats will flip the U.S. House of Representatives, while the Senate is a tossup.

Why it matters

While much of the crypto industry is looking to what federal regulators will do in the wake of last month’s Clarity Act collapse, Congress will still play some important roles next year. Lawmakers are now looking more deeply at crypto tax legislation, and there will likely be hearings.

Breaking it down

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.

Newsletters

And of course, there are concerns from the industry that a Democrat Congress will try to subpoena crypto firms heavily involved in the administration of President Donald Trump, given their concerns about his crypto business ties.

The crypto industry’s involvement with the election since the vote has been limited: the Fairshake Super PAC (funded by a number of companies in the industry) and the Digital Freedom Fund (funded primarily by Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss) have announced expenditures of $30 million and $3 million, respectively, targeting former Senator Sherrod Brown.

But at least for the moment, that may be it. Fairshake told CoinDesk on Wednesday that it does not have any further expenditures to announce at this time. And the closer we get to Nov. 3, the more expensive last-minute ad buys may be.

This week

Congress is out of session.

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.

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See ya’ll next week!