Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that more than sixty of the biggest names in crypto have decided, collectively, to march straight to the desk of the most powerful man on the planet and say: enough is enough.
That’s exactly what happened this week.
A coalition led by heavy hitters from Solana, Coinbase, Uniswap Labs, and dozens more just fired off an open letter to President Donald Trump. Their message is blunt: the United States risks losing its crown as the global home of blockchain innovation unless the administration acts right now — no waiting for Congress, no endless studies, no more excuses.
And honestly? After years of watching regulators treat crypto like the Wild West, this feels like the moment the industry finally grew a spine.
Why This Letter Actually Matters
Sure, we’ve seen plenty of lobbying efforts before. Trade associations release white papers. Executives testify on Capitol Hill. Politicians promise “crypto-friendly” laws that somehow never quite materialize.
This is different.
The letter isn’t asking for new legislation that could take years to pass. It’s demanding immediate executive action — the kind only a president can deliver on day one with a phone call or a signature.
In plain English: they want Trump to pick up the phone, call the Treasury, the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department, and tell them to stand down or stand up — depending on the issue — starting today.
The Core Demands You Need to Know
Let’s break it down, because the wishlist is long, ambitious, and surprisingly practical.
- Clear tax treatment for staking and mining rewards — treat them like self-created property taxed only when sold, not when earned.
- A common-sense de minimis exemption (think $600) so people aren’t filing tax forms every time they buy a coffee with stablecoins.
- Official guidance that wrapping, bridging, or burning tokens isn’t a taxable event. Seriously, the IRS still hasn’t figured this out.
- Drop the criminal case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and declare once and for all that publishing open-source privacy code is protected speech.
- Tell the SEC to back off DeFi protocols and front-ends while formal rulemaking happens — give builders breathing room.
- Public statements from both the SEC and CFTC affirming that self-custody is not only legal but encouraged.
- Roll back FinCEN’s aggressive stance on non-custodial software and abandon the idea of labeling all privacy tools as money-laundering threats.
Any single one of those items would be a massive win. Taken together? This would be the most pro-crypto policy reset in American history — without a single new law passing Congress.
The Tax Nightmare Nobody Talks About (But Everyone Lives)
Let me paint a picture that still keeps me up at night.
You stake some ETH to help secure the network. You earn rewards. The IRS currently treats those rewards like income the second they hit your wallet — even though you can’t sell them without paying gas fees and even though the price could crash tomorrow.
So you owe taxes on phantom income that might disappear before you ever cash out. It’s taxation without realization, and it’s brutal.
“Treat staking rewards the same way we treat mined gold or farmed crops — you only pay when you sell.”
— The coalition’s exact wording in the letter
A single Treasury notice could fix this tomorrow. No vote required.
The same goes for the de minimis rule. Most developed countries already have one. Japan, Portugal, Germany — they all understand that micro-transactions shouldn’t trigger paperwork Armageddon. America is weirdly behind on this.
The Developer Witch Hunt Has to Stop
If you’ve followed the Tornado Cash saga, you know how absurd things have gotten.
Roman Storm wrote code. Open-source code. Code that anyone can read, copy, and run. North Korean hackers used versions of that code to launder money. So the Justice Department charged the programmer with running an unlicensed money transmitter.
Think about that for a second. If the same logic applied to the traditional internet, the inventor of PGP encryption would be in prison. The creators of Tor would be fugitives. We’d have criminalized privacy itself.
The letter calls on the DOJ to drop the case immediately and declare that publishing privacy-preserving software is protected First Amendment activity.
In my view — and I suspect in the view of anyone who actually understands technology — this isn’t even a close call. Code is speech. Full stop.
Self-Custody Isn’t Negotiable
One line in the letter jumped out at me:
“Publicly affirm that individuals have the unrestricted right to self-custody of their digital assets.”
This should be obvious. It’s literally the entire philosophical foundation of cryptocurrency. Yet regulators have spent years hinting that holding your own keys might make you a suspicious person.
A clear statement from the SEC and CFTC would slam that door shut forever.
Why Executive Action Beats Waiting for Congress
Look, I love Senator Lummis and Representative Emmer as much as the next crypto native, but Congress moves at the speed of continental drift.
The FIT21 bill was a huge step forward, but it’s still not law. The SAB 121 repeal passed the House and then died in the Senate. Stablecoin legislation keeps getting promised “next quarter.”
Meanwhile, builders are leaving. Capital is fleeing to Dubai, Singapore, Switzerland. Talented developers are literally moving countries because they’re afraid of being arrested for writing code.
Executive action sidesteps all of that. The President’s Working Group on Digital Assets already published a roadmap earlier this year. Agencies already have the authority to act. They just need marching orders.
What Happens If Trump Actually Does This?
Best-case scenario? The United States triggers the biggest crypto capital inflow in history. Billions — maybe trillions — that have been sitting on the sidelines rush back in.
Uniswap volume explodes. Solana flips Ethereum in daily active users (again). New layer-1s and layer-2s launch from Delaware and Wyoming instead of the Cayman Islands. Privacy tech flourishes instead of going underground.
Worst-case scenario? Some of the requests get ignored, but even partial wins would be transformative.
Either way, the signal would be unmistakable: America is open for blockchain business again.
The Bigger Picture Nobody Is Talking About
Step back for a moment.
This isn’t just about taxes or developers or even crypto. It’s about who gets to control the future of money and information.
Every delay, every ambiguous rule, every prosecution of a coder pushes us closer to a world where only governments and banks can innovate. That’s not hyperbole — that’s the trajectory we’ve been on for four years.
This letter is the industry saying, loudly and in unison: not on our watch.
And the fact that they’re saying it to Donald Trump — a president who once called Bitcoin a scam and now owns a massive personal stack, who campaigned on making America the “crypto capital of the planet” — well, that’s the kind of plot twist you couldn’t make up.
Sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction.
We’re at a fork in the road. One path leads to American leadership in the next generation of finance and technology. The other leads to slow suffocation under regulatory confusion while the rest of the world races ahead.
The crypto industry just handed the new administration a cheat sheet for choosing the right path.
Now we wait to see if they use it.
Either way, one thing feels certain: the era of polite lobbying and incremental progress is over. The gloves are off, and the next few months are going to be wild.
Buckle up.
