Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, speaking onstage during the 2024 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York Times Square on Sep. 24, 2024 in New York City.
John Lamparski | Getty Images for Concordia Summit
LONDON — Coinbase’s top policy executive expects the United States to rapidly regulate the cryptocurrency industry once Donald Trump becomes president.
Faryar Shirzad, chief policy officer at Coinbase, told CNBC he sees crypto legislation making its way through Congress “fairly quickly” after the Republican president-elect — who ran on a notoriously pro-crypto policy platform — enters the White House.
The Republican Party also secured a governing trifecta, gaining control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This, Shirzad suggested, should make the process of approving crypto laws even smoother.
“We have the most pro-crypto Congress ever [in] history, we have an extraordinarily pro-crypto president coming into office,” Shirzad told CNBC last week at an event organized by the U.K. division of Coinbase-backed advocacy group Stand With Crypto.
“I think the combination should finally allow the 50 million Americans who own crypto to have their interests and voice heard in policy.”
His comments come as two key pieces of crypto-related legislation make their way through Congress.
One is the Republican-sponsored Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, which aims to establish a legal framework for digital assets. That bill passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year.
The other is the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, a bill that seeks to establish a regulatory regime to license issuers of stablecoins — tokens that are pegged to the value of fiat currencies like the dollar. The stablecoin bill has not yet passed a House vote.
Shirzad told CNBC he’s “optimistic” the legislation will get passed, but noted there’s only a “small” chance the crypto legislation is considered in the so-called “lame duck” post-election period.
Even if Congress doesn’t give the crypto laws a green light this year, Shirzad expects “significant movement and hopefully passage of both market structure legislation and stablecoin legislation” in 2025.
Crypto’s lobbying power
Trump’s election win marked a major victory for the crypto industry — but it also highlighted the power of the crypto lobbying machine.
Crypto-related political action committees (PACs) — organizations that pool together donations from members to fund campaigns — and other groups tied to the industry raised more than $245 million, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Meanwhile, the Coinbase-backed Stand With Crypto Alliance developed a grading system to determine how for or against crypto House and Senate candidates were. Almost 300 pro-crypto lawmakers will take seats in the House and Senate, according to Stand With Crypto.
Last month, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler announced that he will step down on Jan. 20, the date of Trump’s inauguration. Trump had long promised to replace Gensler, who has taken an aggressive approach to crypto oversight in his time as SEC chair.
Shirzad said he can’t predict who Trump’s SEC pick will be, but said the president-elect is “very good in picking people who share his vision, and he had a very comprehensive platform on crypto.”
“I think as long as he picks somebody who’s a change agent and who shares his shares his vision, I think it’ll be good for the U.S., good for society, good for the people that own crypto,” he added.