Blockchain Association Tells Congress: Rewrite the Crypto Tax Code

The Blockchain Association is done waiting on Congress. On Thursday it sent a letter to the top four leaders on Capitol Hill — Majority Leader John Thune, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — demanding bipartisan digital asset tax legislation. It's the group's first broad tax push since the Clarity Act went down in the Senate last month.

Chief Policy Officer Lindsay Fraser signed the letter, which argues the rules covering the 67 million Americans who own digital assets were drafted for a different era. The group built a companion site, TaxClarityforAmerica.com, so constituents can lean on their own representatives. The wish list: a de minimis break for small transactions, stablecoins treated like cash, mining and staking rewards taxed when sold rather than received, broker reporting limited to firms that actually hold customer assets, and wash sale rules that kill loss harvesting without snagging routine trades. It also wants a safe harbor for foreign traders on U.S. exchanges, a mark-to-market election and R&D credit eligibility for blockchain work.

What the letter pointedly does not include is a thumbs-up for any bill. Two are floating around, and the association named neither. According to Punchbowl News, that silence is the tell — the industry wants more than Congress has put on the table so far.

The House moved fast after Clarity's collapse. One day later, Ways and Means approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, a 114-page package from Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO). It exempts network fees under $10 from capital gains reporting, with a carve-out for anyone who made more than 5,000 transfers the previous year, and stretches wash sale and constructive sale rules to digital assets — though qualified dollar stablecoins dodge the wash sale rule.

The provision the industry wanted most didn't survive. Rep. Mike Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, H.R. 9175, which would have let miners and stakers defer tax until they sell, appeared in an early discussion draft and vanished from the text released September 14. The bill instead treats validation rewards as ordinary income, taxable on receipt. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), who had floated a five-year cap on deferral, voted for the package anyway and said the question stays open. The Blockchain Association, Crypto Council for Innovation and Digital Chamber had asked the committee in June to pass Carey's bill untouched. It did the opposite.

The Senate has its own answer. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) introduced the ADAPT Act on September 30 with Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Bernie Moreno and Tim Scott cosponsoring. It spares GENIUS Act stablecoin purchases from gain or loss, sets the same $10 fee threshold, and applies wash sale rules with grandfathering for existing holdings plus exemptions for mining and staking rewards. It's parked in committee. Lummis's earlier bill, S. 2207, with a $300 per-transaction de minimis cap of $5,000 a year, has sat in Finance since June 2025. Neither chamber's bill contains the small-bitcoin-purchase exemption the industry made a centerpiece at Bitcoin 2026 — the House threshold covers fees, the Senate spending break covers stablecoins. The Bitcoin Policy Institute and others say any de minimis rule should cover bitcoin; Thursday's letter asks for a quote-meaningful exemption without naming a number. Congress is in recess until after the November 3 midterms, leaving a lame-duck session measured in weeks, and Lummis — the Senate's loudest crypto tax voice — retires in January 2027.