US crypto rules need to survive the next election

US crypto rules could be vulnerable to political change after the midterms. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo argues Congress needs to pass durable, bipartisan legislation.

Opinion by Andrew M. Cuomo, former governor of New York

The digital asset revolution is here, and it’s already transforming our financial system.

We’re no longer questioning if it will continue to develop. It will. The issue is whether the United States will establish clear, durable rules for it to develop here.

The CLARITY Act was intended to solve this problem. It would have provided a national framework for digital assets, clarified the roles of federal agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and given businesses, investors and consumers a clear understanding of the rules.

The House passed the CLARITY Act in 2025, but Congress has yet to send a bill to the president. The Senate failed to advance the Act in September, leaving most to wonder: what happens now?

Those same federal agencies have rushed in with new regulations that significantly restructure the market. Both the SEC and CFTC have been hyper-aggressive in promulgating new rules, filling the void left by Congress, proposing a new federal framework for crypto trading platforms and a bespoke regulatory regime for certain crypto assets.

In the short term, this is great, and we’ll see many new market opportunities as a result. But the reality is that these rules have been adopted in the absence of a market structure law enacted by Congress and rely on agencies’ existing statutory authority, lacking the durability of a new law.

More poignantly from the Democrats’ point of view, they were adopted despite congressional opposition. That means the rules are politically vulnerable from the start.

And hell hath no fury like a Congress scorned.

Related: Is there any chance left to save the CLARITY Act?

If prediction markets and current electoral trends are to be believed, Democrats will control one, if not both, houses of Congress after the midterms. And the power of Congress to derail and disrupt agency action should never be underestimated.