congress

According to The Block, as the U.S. midterm elections approach, the digital asset industry may face changes in the congressional political landscape. Over the past two years, the Republican-led Congress passed the stablecoin bill GENIUS Act and advanced the broader Clarity Act; the latter passed the House in 2025 but stalled in the Senate due to controversies over stablecoin rewards and ethical issues raised by former President Trump's crypto wealth. Prediction market Kalshi shows that the probability of the Democrats winning the Senate and the House is 64% and 90%, respectively.The chair of congressional committees holds the power to set the agenda. If the Democrats regain the Senate, Elizabeth Warren will become the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Ron Hammond, head of policy and advocacy at Wintermute, expects that she will actively use subpoena power and may focus on scrutinizing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's approvals of new bank charters for Ripple, Coinbase, and World Liberty Financial, which is supported by the Trump family.The election situation in Ohio is also under scrutiny, with former Senate Banking Committee chair Sherrod Brown facing pro-crypto Republican Jon Husted. Fairshake PAC has pledged $30 million to support Husted. Hammond stated that if Brown wins, he may become the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which could potentially shelve related crypto legislation. In the House Financial Services Committee, regardless of whether Maxine Waters, Sean Casten, or Bill Foster leads, the Clarity Act is unlikely to advance. Lindsay Fraser, chief policy officer of the Blockchain Association, stated that while congressional control may change, the demand for clear crypto regulations will not.

With only 22 days left until the U.S. midterm elections, Fairshake, aligned with the stance of the U.S. cryptocurrency industry, and its affiliated Political Action Committee (PAC) have ramped up advertising to support their identified "crypto-friendly" candidates. According to documents disclosed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Saturday, the PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress have collectively spent $2.7 million on media and direct mail production to support Democratic and Republican candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. Fairshake's funding primarily comes from donations from investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, and Ripple Labs.Specific expenditures include: over $76,000 for House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, $73,000 for House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson, $512,000 for California Congressman Pete Aguilar, and $500,000 for New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer. A few days earlier, Fairshake announced it would additionally support 32 House candidates in 2026, with 6 of them each receiving $1 million in media support.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, U.S. Congressman Warren Davidson stated in an interview video published by Bitcoin Magazine that the future of currency is closely linked to the future of Western civilization.He pointed out that the U.S. is burdened with about $40 trillion in debt, and since 2020, the dollar has lost about 30% of its purchasing power. The rising risk of default and inflation are driving up interest rates, and those without physical assets will lose purchasing power. Davidson is the founder of the Sound Money Caucus.In the interview, Davidson also discussed the end of the debate vote on the Clarity Act and its Section 305's threat to self-custody, as well as whether the bill will be reintroduced after the midterm elections, and topics such as open-source developer protection and the Trump family ethics clause. He also mentioned the American Reserve Modernization Act and the issue of the U.S. government holding Bitcoin, and responded to whether Bitcoin has become a partisan issue.Additionally, Davidson expressed his views on central bank digital currencies, financial surveillance, and reforms to the Bank Secrecy Act, referring to stablecoins as "Hydra-like" central bank digital currencies, and discussed the GENIUS Act. He urged Bitcoin supporters to defend freedom in the midterm elections and warned that the direction of the monetary system's development will determine the trajectory of Western civilization.

According to Axios, executives from AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are privately rehearsing how to respond to public and political backlash following a catastrophic AI event. The scenario they are most concerned about is a large-scale cyberattack leading to disruptions in banking, the internet, and even electricity and water supply. Several industry insiders believe that a significant event will occur within the next 6 to 12 months. OpenAI stated that they are conducting preparatory drills and do not consider the related scenarios as inevitable; Anthropic declined to comment.The report states that the related plans include conducting red team tests for worst-case scenarios and educating congressional members as soon as possible. Executives are aware that current regulations are difficult to pass but hope to shape the laws and policies that U.S. leaders will adopt after the first disaster. In July of this year, OpenAI claimed that its GPT-5.6 Sol model and a more advanced unpublished model escaped the sandbox and infiltrated Hugging Face, aiming to obtain answers to the ExploitGym benchmark, which contains 898 real software vulnerabilities. More than a week later, Anthropic stated that a misconfiguration in testing allowed its environment, which was supposed to be offline, to connect to the internet, and the Claude model infiltrated three real organizations under what was considered a drill.Subsequently, OpenAI was accused of infiltrating and obtaining information from the Australian and U.S. governments. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike this week linked attacks on Korean banks to an unidentified actor, assessing that it may involve Chinese users utilizing Claude and Deepseek agents, allegedly stealing data from tens of thousands of bank customers.

Chairman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee French Hill stated that the actions taken by regulators to advance digital asset regulation lack the long-term stability provided by congressional legislation. He hopes that Congress will pass the CLARITY Act during the lame-duck session before the new Congress takes office in 2027.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have previously proposed relevant rule-making plans. French Hill indicated that the regulatory actions of the two agencies following the Senate's failure to pass the CLARITY Act last month are still insufficient to replace legislative proposals. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig have announced that they will advance cryptocurrency regulation as directed by U.S. President Donald Trump. As of Wednesday, there are a total of 7 vacancies in the leadership of the two agencies; among them, Hester Peirce announced her resignation as SEC Commissioner last week, and the CFTC is currently only chaired and staffed by Selig.

Bitcoin News posted on platform X stating that the Congressional Research Service pointed out in a new report that since 2017, with changes in presidential administrations, federal regulators have repeatedly changed their stance on whether banks can engage in cryptocurrency activities.The report states that Congress could clarify through legislation to explicitly allow or restrict specific activities to reduce the frequent adjustments in regulatory positions. The report mentions the CLARITY Act: the version passed by the House of Representatives would allow banks to use digital assets or blockchain for activities already permitted by current law; the version reported by the Senate committee would explicitly allow 11 types of cryptocurrency activities, including allowing banks to underwrite and trade digital assets more broadly.

Former New York Governor and OKX Director Andrew Cuomo stated that if the Democratic Party wins Congress in the midterm elections, the current regulatory progress in the cryptocurrency industry may be overturned. He noted that the ad hoc rules set by regulators are much weaker than legislation and emphasized that "regulation is not legislation."Previously, on September 15, the Senate voted 49 in favor and 50 against to veto the CLARITY Act, which aimed to establish federal rules for the cryptocurrency market, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold; the SEC granted a five-year exemption for tokenized stock trading on September 17. Andrew Cuomo expects the new Congress to closely scrutinize such agency rules and hopes that the lame-duck Congress will pass relevant legislation before January 1 of next year.

According to Bloomberg, informed sources say that contracts betting on the collapse of institutions such as Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America on the prediction market platform Polymarket have raised concerns among FDIC officials and members of Congress. Some individuals worry that the expansion of such contracts could fuel real-world bank runs.After internal discussions, the FDIC believes that the current ethical guidelines are sufficient to prohibit insiders from participating in trading. Currently, the trading volume of these contracts is relatively small, with recent bets on bank collapses before the end of the year amounting to approximately $76,000.

The U.S. Congress passed a bill authorizing President Trump to impose tariffs on countries purchasing Russian oil products. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated that China conducts economic and trade cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, opposing extraterritorial jurisdiction not authorized by the United Nations Security Council.

On September 15, local time, U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie submitted articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accusing him of abusing his power by ordering hostile military action against Iran without congressional approval.This impeachment resolution has little chance of passing, but Massie's move may force the House of Representatives to hold a vote on the matter. Massie submitted the articles of impeachment under privileged motion procedures, meaning the House must consider the impeachment within two legislative workdays and cannot postpone or delay it.

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong stated that the CLARITY Act did not advance in the Senate today, which is disappointing. Although bipartisan dialogue may continue and the bill still has potential for follow-up, we can no longer wait for Congress.Armstrong indicated that the SEC and CFTC already have the tools to establish clear rules under their existing authority and are expected to seriously move forward; clear rules in the crypto space will still come. GENIUS is already the current law in the stablecoin sector, with more lenient rewards. CLARITY made some concessions that were difficult to accept, and perhaps this is better.He stated that crypto cannot be canceled once it has been invented, and as regulators bring clear rules, the financial system will continue to be updated.

User Kevin Bass posted that he has audited the finances of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic and found shocking circumstances, thus calling for Congress to investigate. Bass stated: Anthropic not only seeks regulatory capture but has also built an unshuttable regulatory capture machine, with structural financial incentives making it impossible to shut down its AI doomsday loop. This loop begins with METR, which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed to be assessed for model risk by a third-party evaluation agency and suggested METR.Bass claimed that METR financially relies on Anthropic's success, particularly the explosive growth of Anthropic stock exceeding $7 billion. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz invested this stock into Good Ventures Foundation, which constitutes the majority of the organization's portfolio, and GVF is the overwhelming funder of the entire Anthropic network ecosystem. This stock was worth $500 million earlier last year and is now valued at over $7.7 billion about 16 months later. METR cannot afford to interrupt this growth.Bass pointed out that the same organization funding METR also funds organizations promoting AI doomsday, such as the Tarbell Center, which has published articles in The Verge, Science, Los Angeles Times, and others. These organizations all rely on the same funding. Bass stated that METR and others are not independent of Anthropic and cannot provide independent assessments; Congress must investigate.

Former President Donald Trump stated that if the Republican Party wins the House of Representatives and the Senate, they will distribute a bonus of $5,000 to every adult in the United States.

According to "Digital Assets," the number of signatures for the petition in the South Korean National Assembly to postpone the taxation of virtual assets by 2 years has exceeded 32,000. The threshold for the National Assembly petition is 50,000 signatures, and if an additional 18,000 signatures are collected before September 20, the petition will be formally submitted for review by the relevant standing committee.The reason for the petition is that taxing digital assets will lead to a significant decline in exchange revenues, which in turn will result in a decrease in corporate tax revenue. Currently, the government insists on implementing the taxation normally starting in January 2027, while the People Power Party opposes it, citing reasons such as inadequate infrastructure.

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis stated that if the Clarity Act fails to pass in this Congress, the next real opportunity to reintroduce market structure legislation will not come until 2030. Completing this work now could prevent wasting job opportunities, investments, and tax revenue in the coming years.

Circle President and former CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert stated at a hearing of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee that the GENIUS Act has established a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, equivalent to building a "dollar layer" for the internet financial system. He urged Congress to next pass the CLARITY Act to complete the long-term regulatory framework for the "market layer" of digital assets.In addition, Tarbert also urged that the final implementation rules of the GENIUS Act should close the regulatory arbitrage space for offshore stablecoins, requiring intermediary institutions that actually serve U.S. customers to be subject to corresponding restrictions, and ensuring that foreign stablecoin issuers meet truly comparable regulatory standards.

The prediction market platform Kalshi has permanently banned former U.S. Congressman George Santos and fined him $71,356 for manipulating a market related to his attendance at the State of the Union address, profiting nearly $18,000. This is the first time the exchange has imposed a lifetime ban on a former member of Congress.According to a disciplinary notice issued by Kalshi's compliance department on August 28, Santos conducted multiple large transactions in this market between February 2 and 25. Since he was able to influence the outcome, exchange rules prohibited him from participating in trading. He subsequently issued a series of public statements regarding his attendance, some of which were false or misleading, intending to drive price movements in the "Yes" and "No" contracts. The compliance department determined that these statements did indeed manipulate prices, allowing him to profit $17,839.57 in the relevant market, violating multiple rules regarding market manipulation, influencing trading outcomes, and using deceptive practices, and he faced additional penalties for failing to cooperate with the investigation.The prediction market allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events such as elections, sports, and economic data by purchasing "Yes" or "No" contracts. As event contracts have become mainstream, Kalshi and its crypto-native competitor Polymarket have seen a surge in trading volume over the past year, attracting significant institutional interest.