Welcome to the Forward Guidance newsletter, brought to you by Casey Wagner and Ben Strack. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• Casey has the view from DC. 

• Democrats make an about-face on this pending nominee. 

• Trump chatted with another crypto exec. The bitcoin reserve topic came up.

Politics are alive and well in crypto

Hello from Washington, where I’ve spent the last couple of days at the Blockchain Association Policy Summit. 

The speaker lineup is impressive: Senators and representatives from both parties, two sitting SEC commissioners (from the same party), plus a virtual appearance from President-elect Trump himself. 

This isn’t my first crypto policy conference. I’ve heard the soundbites, and you probably have, too. The Democrats brave enough to take the stage say they want to work across the aisle. The industry execs say they want guidance. The regulators say they’re just trying to protect investors. 

It’s an oversimplification, sure, but that’s the gist. The panels at these events, at least lately, seem to all come back to this idea that crypto is bipartisan. 

But is this all talk? 

Some efforts have been bipartisan. Just look at FIT21, which earned votes from 71 Democrats, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand may not have endorsed the same candidate for president, but they have co-authored bills the industry has largely supported. 

These bipartisan efforts are not nothing, but they also aren’t everything. We’ve had a divided government and while some bills passed, none became law. Most legislation didn’t even make it out of committee. 

The election and crypto’s somewhat surprising prominence in the political sphere this year showed that one party really wanted the industry's vote. Now, Republicans don’t need to make promises to try and work across the aisle, but Democrats do. 

Even Democrats admit that Vice President Kamala Harris could have — and perhaps should have — done more to win over the industry. 

“We really wanted to get a pivot from Harris,” Rep. Wiley Nickel said Monday. “They engaged for the first time, they had some good meetings… but all in all, it was really just too little, too late.” 

If crypto really is such a bipartisan issue, why is what seems like the vast majority of the industry so excited about the Republican sweep? There’s no denying that crypto actors believe Republicans will do more for them, and that Trump will do more for them. 

We won’t know what would have happened if Harris had won last month. But we know what happened under Biden, and we know what happened during Trump’s first go-round. Remember: It was Trump’s SEC chair who sued Ripple, he nominated SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and Ross Ulbricht — the Silk Road founder Trump has now promised to commute — has been incarcerated since 2015.

In a video message shared with conference attendees Monday evening, Trump addressed the crypto community. 

“We’re behind you and we will fight for you and we’re going to make sure that we keep our business in the United States,” he said. “We want it here rather than China or so many other places.” 

Like I said, we don’t know what will happen. What would Washington be without some (potentially) empty promises about bipartisan efforts?

Capitol Hill might surprise us next session. Stranger things have happened.

— Casey Wagner

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The number of investigative “requests” (i.e. subpoenas, court orders, search warrants) Coinbase received from Oct. 2023 through Sept. 2024. This number is down 18% from the prior year period. 

US federal agencies and law enforcement issued more requests than those of any other country. Coinbase said it sometimes objects to producing info, if deemed legally insufficient.

It’s been half a year since Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meeting with bitcoin mining executives, and his engagement with the industry has persisted.

After vocalizing support for American BTC mining in June, Trump unveiled more crypto-related promises at Nashville’s Bitcoin 2024 conference.

Then, in November, the Wall Street Journal broke news about his scheduled meeting with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.

The latest rendezvous? A conversation with Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek on Monday.

“They discussed appointments related to the crypto industry, the Bitcoin reserve and the overall optimism for [the] US crypto market,” a person familiar with the conversation told Blockworks. 

A Crypto.com spokesperson declined to comment on details. 

We’ve seen Trump nominate crypto-friendly people (i.e. Howard Lutnick) to key positions and bring on a so-called crypto czar. The proposed national bitcoin reserve too remains something everyone is watching.

Lawmakers in Brazil and Japan have started discussing such purchases. Trump preaches American superiority, so setting out to win a BTC buying race wouldn’t be much of a stretch.   

The president-elect indeed signaled a BTC reserve is being considered. MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor has said other countries would “stampede to keep up” should the US go this route. 

You probably remember Saylor giving a presentation for Microsoft shareholders on why BTC is worth buying and holding. The question now is when he’ll give a similar one in the White House.

— Ben Strack

The Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday decided to abandon its effort to re-confirm SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw. 

The news, somewhat ironically, was leaked while Sen. Tim Scott, the Republican gunning to lead the Banking Committee next session, was wrapping up his remarks at the Blockchain Association event. 

Crenshaw’s confirmation vote, initially scheduled for last week, was postponed after Senate Republicans successfully blocked it.

“Having fought ‘train Crenshaw’ for the last several months… to have a resounding victory of not having her go forward last week, I was so excited,” Scott said before learning the vote had been canceled. 

The vote was rescheduled for this week, but the committee “just didn’t have the votes,” a person familiar with the matter said. A spokesperson from the committee disagreed, saying they “had the support,” but “ran out of time.” 

A representative for Crenshaw did not immediately return a request for comment. 

Now that Crenshaw is out and Chair Gary Gensler and Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga, both Democrats, will be resigning in the new year, President-elect Donald Trump now has three seats to fill. 

In the meantime, Trump will name either Commissioner Hester Peirce or Mark Uyeda as acting chair while his pick for the top job, Republican Paul Atkins, is confirmed. 

So the commission is going to be small — at least for the first few weeks of 2025. This will not be the first time the SEC has operated with only two commissioners, and precedent largely supports allowing these two commissioners to vote on matters and conduct business as usual.

The more provocative these actions are, though, the greater the likelihood of a legal battle. When it comes to making the agenda, the chair, or acting chair, holds all the power.

— Casey Wagner

• The SEC plans to accuse Unicoin of fraud and other violations related to the sale of unregistered securities, Fortune reported. Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin called the allegations “not just false but utterly ridiculous” in an email to Blockworks. The SEC declined to comment.  

• Bitcoin hit a new all-time high on Tuesday above $108,200 before dropping to about $106,700 by 2 pm ET. After hovering above $4,000 for portions of the last 24 hours, ETH had dipped to around $3,930 this afternoon.    

• US spot bitcoin ETFs notched net inflows for a 13th consecutive trading day on Monday. Capital entering the funds on those days total nearly $6 billion. The country’s ether products have raked in positive flows in 16 straight days, amounting to $2.3 billion over that span.  

• The common stock of crypto software provider Exodus is set to list on the NYSE American stock exchange tomorrow after its planned listing was delayed earlier this year.