U.S. lawmakers are light on crypto heading into new Trump era
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U.S. lawmakers are light on crypto heading into new Trump era
An illustration featuring U.S. President-elect Donald Trump holding Bitcoin is displayed outside a cryptocurrency exchange store after Bitcoin soars above $100,000, in Hong Kong
Douglas Gillison, Tom Bergin, Chris Prentice and Isla Binnie
6 min read
By Douglas Gillison, Tom Bergin, Chris Prentice and Isla Binnie
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to usher in a boom time for crypto but a Reuters review shows very few members of the incoming congress are invested in bitcoin or other digital currencies.
On Thursday, Trump signed an order to create a cryptocurrency working group to open up the regulatory framework, and just days before he took office he launched a new crypto token.
But while many Republicans in Congress have pledged to support Trump’s agenda, a Reuters review of the most recent financial disclosures by the 535 incoming members of Congress found that few have made personal investments in crypto: only 13 members of the House and Senate had investments in cryptocurrencies as of their most recent filings. The spouse of one other representative owns bitcoin, and a second spouse has an agreement that could bring her coins.
All told, that is fewer than 3% of the members of the House of Representatives and Senate with direct exposure to cryptocurrency.
Although members of Congress are in general far wealthier than the public as a whole, their filings suggest they are for now much less likely to own crypto assets. According to a recent Pew Research survey, nearly one in five Americans reported at some point having invested in, traded or used a cryptocurrency.
The amounts, too, are small. One senator – wealthy former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick – has up to $5 million of investment in a bitcoin fund. Apart from him, the combined cryptocurrency value of all the other 12 lawmakers is between $1.1 million and $2.6 million - a fraction of their reported wealth. Vice President J.D. Vance reported crypto holdings of between $250,001 and $500,000. (Reuters included the former senator from Ohio and now vice president because his position makes him president of the Senate.)
The small investments stand in contrast to the money poured into American politics by the crypto industry. By the summer, crypto companies had already spent more than $100 million, or nearly half of all corporate donations, on congressional races, accounting for nearly one in two dollars in corporate contributions, according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
Tyler Gellasch, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who heads the Healthy Markets Association, an organization in Washington, D.C. that advocates for strong securities regulation, said legislators' low holdings might be an aversion to the lack of safeguards surrounding the assets.
“They are likely more aware of the risks than the general public, especially the lack of a coherent and robust regulatory regime,” Gellasch said, adding: "It’s not a bad thing for members to not have a self-interest in pumping up the value of their own digital asset holdings.”
Critics of cryptocurrencies, including some senior commercial and central bankers, highlight problems with fraud and say the fact that they are not backed by underlying, cash-generating assets or businesses makes buying them more like gambling than investing.
Reuters requested comment from the 13 members of the incoming Congress whose disclosures showed cryptocurrency holdings. Only two replied.
“Lawmakers' engagement now—before significant personal investments—underscores their commitment to ensuring crypto becomes a robust, U.S.-led industry in the years to come,” said Cody Carbone, president of the Digital Chamber, a leading crypto industry lobbying group with past ties to the man nominated as the next chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins. Atkins did not respond to a request for comment.
LEGISLATION EXPECTED
The Reuters review is the first of its kind to be published for the incoming Congress. It covers transactions through early January, before Trump launched his own cryptocurrency during the run-up to his inauguration. Reuters examined thousands of pages from 1,500 Congressional disclosure documents filed up to January 22, doing multiple automated searches of 1,300 of those and manual reviews for 200 filings that were handwritten or not scanned as clear images.
The incoming Congress, both of its chambers now controlled by Republicans, is expected to move to create a legal framework for crypto to grow as part of more traditional finance. The crypto sector opened its wallet to back Trump and numerous congressional campaigns. Trump has tapped crypto advocates for high-level roles in his administration and named crypto investor David Sacks to be the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar.
“It seems virtually certain that Congress will take up crypto reform in the coming year,” said Yesha Yadav, associate dean at Vanderbilt University Law School, and an expert in digital asset regulation and market structure.
The low rate of investment by Congressional members to date is not a surprise, Yadav said. Crypto is still a relatively new asset, and “it has not benefited from a well-tailored, protective perimeter in the U.S. historically (a fact that should be well-known to those serving in Congress),” she said by e-mail.
In Ohio, crypto interests spent at least $40 million in the past election boosting pro-crypto Republican Bernie Moreno, who defeated crypto-skeptic Democrat Sherrod Brown, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, according to campaign finance records. While a previous candidate filing for Moreno showed a revocable trust with between $100,000 and $250,000 in bitcoin in 2021, as of his most recent filing the senator had apparently divested, showing no crypto holdings at all. Moreno’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
At least 10 of the lawmakers reported interests in bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency. Others held more obscure investments, such as Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican from Georgia who owns three small cryptocoins including “Aerodrome” and “Ski Mask Dog.” Collins’s total holdings in crypto are worth at least $56,015, and possibly more than $315,002. Because his filings recorded transactions and not balances, it was not possible to establish a clearer range. Collins did not respond to requests for comment.
The disclosures in some cases listed assets that were not possible to parse. For example, Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, has been one of crypto’s top advocates in the Senate, sponsoring bills to create a regulatory framework for crypto – and one last year that would have required the U.S. government to stockpile bitcoin. Lummis said in a recent CNBC interview that she’s previously owned five bitcoin but did not know whether that’s still the case. Her most recent filing shows none. An entry in her 2022 disclosure for a blind trust showed holdings of bitcoin between $50,001 and $100,000. If she has held on to that investment, it should be worth $300,000 to $600,000 on Wednesday, assuming it moved in line with bitcoin’s price.
Lummis was an “early investor before placing her assets in a blind trust…to prevent the possibility of any conflict of interest,” her spokesperson said in a statement.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington, D.C. , Chris Prentice and Isla Binnie in New York and Tom Bergin in London. Additional reporting by Charlie Szymanski and Hannah Lang; Editing by Tom Lasseter and Claudia Parsons)
