The White House praised President Donald Trump for making the United States the “crypto capital of the world,” and cast the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act as the catalyst in making the country the “global leader in cryptocurrency.”
In a recent post on X, an official communication added, “promises made, promises kept,” to Trump ending the Biden era “crusade to crush crypto.”
Moving beyond the rhetoric, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced a joint event on Thursday to discuss “harmonization between the two agencies and their efforts to deliver on President Trump’s promise.”
While many in the industry may accept that policy direction has shifted, for others, like Roman Storm, the Tornado Cash co‑founder awaiting sentencing, ongoing prosecutions of developers make it hard to claim the crackdown is truly over.
In a Monday reply to the White House, Storm said it was encouraging to see America celebrate itself as the crypto capital, but stressed that a genuine leader “isn’t just about stablecoin legislation like the GENIUS Act – it’s about protecting the developers who build the foundational code.”
A blurred line between code and compliance
The Samourai Wallet case underlines that concern, as founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill received lengthy prison sentences in November 2025 after US authorities said they facilitated illicit flows through Samourai, despite its non‑custodial design.
Related: Samourai co-founder claims Biden-era lawfare in calling for Trump pardon
For many builders, the combination of non‑custodial architecture and custodial‑style penalties blurs the line between publishing code and running a financial intermediary.
It also fuels fears that the next target could be any privacy or decentralized finance (DeFi) tooling that touches US users, regardless of whether developers control customer funds.
That anxiety has already reached Capitol Hill, where Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden recently introduced the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act to make clear that non‑custodial developers and infrastructure providers who do not control user funds are not money transmitters under federal law.
Max Shannon, senior research associate at Bitwise, told Cointelegraph that the White House’s language was a marker of how far policy has moved from the Operation Chokepoint era of former President Joe Biden, former SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Senator Elizabeth Warren. He pointed to numerous successes of the current administration, from the GENIUS Act to the Crypto Task Force.
Still, he said that Bitwise believes markets are still pricing in a “CLARITY Act discount.” Until a stable division of responsibilities between regulators and thorny issues like DeFi, privacy and yield‑bearing stablecoins is locked in, valuations will reflect residual legal risk.
He sees the definition of “control” in CLARITY’s developer protections as a critical fault line, promising safeguards for those who “do not control customer funds,” but remaining unclear whether that phrase is limited to private key custody or multiple signature (multisig) arrangements, wallets, sequencers and front ends.
Related: Who gets the yield? CLARITY Act becomes fight over onchain dollars
Unclear custody rules could drive builders offshore
Institutional-grade, non-custodial staking provider Twinstake CEO Andrew Gibb strikes a similar balance. He told Cointelegraph that the GENIUS Act was a “sizable and meaningful step” toward giving institutions clarity to scale their strategies in the US, but stressed that high‑profile cases like Storm’s still send a chilling signal, even if the broader trajectory looks positive.
Related: How to legally stake crypto in 2025 under the SEC’s new rules
Gibb wants lawmakers to hardwire a clear line between infrastructure providers and financial intermediaries, rooted in custody, control and discretion, and backed up by explicit safe harbors so non‑custodial validators and interface providers are not treated as de facto banks or money transmitters.
If these ambiguities are not addressed at the next markup, he warned, there is “a real risk the US framework will be seen as unpredictable, pushing developers offshore.”
The Senate Agriculture Committee had planned to review the digital asset market clarity (CLARITY) bill on Tuesday, but the session was postponed to Thursday because of winter weather conditions.
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