Blockchain Association asks Congress for digital asset tax legislation

The Blockchain Association sent an Oct. 22 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, asking them to advance bipartisan digital asset tax legislation, the group said in its press release.

The letter is signed by Lindsay Fraser, the association's chief policy officer, and was paired with the launch of TaxClarityforAmerica.com, a site that lets constituents send messages to their representatives on digital asset tax policy. The group says its membership covers more than 100 firms, and the letter leans on tax principles it first published in February.

"Americans who use digital assets aren't asking for special treatment. They want to follow the law and pay the taxes they owe, but today's rules are often unclear and unworkable," Fraser said in the release. The letter argues that the rules governing the 67 million Americans who hold digital assets "were written for a different era."

The asks are specific: a de minimis exemption for small transactions, stablecoins treated as cash for tax purposes, mining and staking rewards taxed when the rewards are sold rather than when they are received, broker reporting limited to firms that hold customer assets, and wash sale rules that catch loss harvesting without sweeping in everyday transfers. The letter also seeks a safe harbor for foreign traders on U.S. exchanges, an optional mark-to-market election, and eligibility for blockchain development under research and development tax credits, as laid out in the association's principles.

What the letter does not do is pick a bill. Two proposals have moved through tax committees this fall, and the association named neither one, a stop-short that Bitcoin Magazine reported as a sign the industry is not satisfied with what Congress has produced on crypto taxes.

The House moved first. One day after the market structure Clarity Act failed a Senate cloture vote on Sept. 15, the Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, a 114-page package from Chairman Jason Smith. The bill exempts network fees under $10 from capital gains reporting, with an exception for taxpayers who made more than 5,000 transfers in the prior year, and it extends wash sale and constructive sale rules to digital assets while exempting qualified dollar stablecoins from the wash sale rule, Bitcoin Magazine reported.

The package dropped the provision industry wanted most. Rep. Mike Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, H.R. 9175, would have let miners and stakers defer tax until they sell, but it was gone from the text the committee released on Sept. 14, and the released bill classes validation rewards as ordinary income taxable on receipt. Rep. Steven Horsford, who had proposed a five-year deferral cap, voted for the package and said the question stays open for further work.

The Senate has its own vehicle. Sen. Steve Daines introduced the ADAPT Act on Sept. 30 with Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Bernie Moreno and Tim Scott as cosponsors; it exempts purchases made with GENIUS Act stablecoins from gain or loss, sets the same $10 fee threshold, and applies wash sale rules with grandfathering for existing holdings. It sits in committee, as does Lummis's earlier S. 2207, which would set a $300 per-transaction de minimis exemption capped at $5,000 a year and has been in the Finance Committee since June 2025.

The market structure bill that failed this fall still shapes the choice. The Clarity Act passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and then sat in the Senate for more than a year while banking groups fought the industry over stablecoin yield and Democrats pressed for ethics language tied to the Trump family's crypto ventures. The cloture vote on Sept. 15 failed 49-50, with Republicans Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran voting no, and Sen. Thom Tillis switching his vote so he could file a motion to reconsider, which keeps the bill alive on paper and little more.

Timing works against the push. Congress is in recess until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and when members return the 119th Congress will have a lame-duck session measured in weeks, with crypto taxes competing against government funding. Lummis, the Senate's leading voice on digital asset taxes, retires in January 2027.