1inch lawyer says agencies, not Congress, will drive US crypto rules

What happened

As US voters went to the polls in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, Maylea Ma, deputy general counsel at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, said she expects federal agencies rather than lawmakers to steer the next stretch of crypto policymaking. The contest could alter the outlook for the stalled CLARITY Act, but Ma told Cointelegraph that meaningful progress on digital-asset rules over the coming years will originate with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department.

According to Ma, those bodies have been steadily increasing their contact with crypto projects. That engagement, however, does not give the industry the durability it had hoped to obtain through legislation. She described a lasting statute as the long-term objective, noting that rules written into law are not erased each time a new government takes office.

Michael Ho, co-founder of D3, the team behind Doma Protocol, made a similar point about investor behavior. With the market-structure bill stuck, he said US crypto policy continues to depend on agency guidance that a later administration could withdraw, and that this leaves substantial capital on the sidelines. In his view, clearly written legal rules are what would draw institutional money into tokenized real-world assets, whatever the electoral result turns out to be.

Why it matters

The comments frame a split between two ways of making crypto policy: through agencies that can act without new legislation, and through Congress, where comprehensive market-structure rules have yet to pass. Agency action can arrive faster, but it is also easier to unwind, which matters to firms weighing long-term US operations and to institutions assessing tokenized asset markets. For an industry that devoted record sums to congressional races, the argument suggests that election spending alone will not deliver the predictability businesses say they need.

What the data shows

Bitcoinist, citing Reuters, reported that crypto-linked groups spent roughly $176 million across more than 100 congressional races in the 2026 cycle, aiming to build bipartisan backing for digital-asset legislation. Fairshake, a major industry political action committee supported by Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz, announced in October that it was backing 32 incumbent House candidates, 19 Republicans and 13 Democrats. In Ohio, about $63 million was directed toward supporting Republican Jon Husted or opposing Democrat Sherrod Brown, a former Senate Banking Committee chairman who has criticized parts of the industry's regulatory agenda.

Background

The CLARITY Act, formally the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, would divide oversight responsibilities between the SEC and the CFTC. It stalled in September when the Senate failed to advance it in a procedural vote. Two days later, on Sept. 17, the CFTC sent a crypto market regulatory plan to the White House for review. In August, the SEC proposed a framework for crypto fundraising that included exemptions for some token offerings and a safe harbor from investment-contract treatment, and in September it revised staff guidance on token buybacks, crypto networks and staking receipt tokens. Bitcoinist noted that the GENIUS Act, which created a federal framework for payment stablecoins in 2025, shows legislation can still move.

What is still unclear

The two reports describe the election's status differently. Cointelegraph framed voting as still under way with control of Congress at stake, while Bitcoinist said Democrats had gained control of Congress and that several crypto-backed campaigns had come up short, including the Ohio race. Neither account gives a final seat count or a definitive read on how the new Congress will treat digital-asset bills.

What to watch

The next signals to track are whether lawmakers revive CLARITY Act negotiations under new leadership, how congressional committees set their digital-asset priorities, and whether industry groups hold to a bipartisan lobbying strategy after a costly cycle. Also worth watching: how far the SEC's proposed fundraising framework and the CFTC's plan submitted for White House review advance, since those measures would shape US crypto oversight in the absence of a statute.

Questions readers ask