Crypto Policy Impacts You Even If You Do Not Use Crypto
The crypto industry is trying to change federal laws and regulations to give themselves carte blanche operating power, without any meaningful oversight, regulation, or accountability. And, adding insult to injury, the industry is trying to block states from being able to step in and close the giant federal loopholes they are creating .
If the crypto industry gets its way, highly volatile, risky, and unstable digital assets will be embedded in the financial mainstream, including within retirement accounts. And basic rules that protect investors and increase stability and transparency in all kinds of financial markets and transactions will be shredded.
This reckless deregulatory agenda, driven by greed, threatens to destabilize our financial system and pummel the health of our economy. The end result could be a financial crisis that devastates individuals, families, and communities, regardless of whether they invested in crypto, and could lead to a bailout that costs many billions of dollars in government intervention and recovery efforts.
Crypto Corruption is Rampant
President Trump and his family are advancing crypto’s agenda while openly profiting from their own cryptocurrencies and businesses. The President and his family have made more than $5 billion in crypto ventures this year alone. The President is also using crypto as a way for the ultrarich to buy political access for favors—wealthy investors earlier this year spent $148 million on the First Family’s crypto coin just to have dinner with the President. The outside investments and partnerships with the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial (WLF) raise stunning conflicts of interest problems.
A member of the United Arab Emirates royal family directed a government investment fund to plow $500 million into WLF, grabbing a 49 percent stake and two board seats in the company. The sovereign wealth fund then bought $2 billion in the WLF stablecoin — the biggest stablecoin purchase in history — which it used to buy a stake in the offshore crypto exchange Binance.
After the Emirati investment and stablecoin deals, Trump lifted a national security ban on exporting advanced AI chips to the UAE. Crypto mogul Justin Sun also invested more than $75 million in WLF. Not long after, Trump’s federal regulators dismissed a fraud case against Sun and his crypto firm and later pardoned the head of Binance, who had been convicted of flagrant money laundering violations.
Trump says there has been no quid pro quo, but the scale of the crypto deals and the timing of the political favors raises multiple red flags about the administration furthering Trump family crypto interests over the public interest.
Crypto is a Vehicle for Money Laundering, Scams, and Fraud
Cryptocurrency is a favorite tool of money launderers, scammers, and fraudsters that fleece small investors, and essentially pick people’s pockets at increasing scale. Cartels and drug traffickers are using crypto and digital wallets to skirt anti-money laundering controls and sanctions, including across borders. Scammers and fraudsters use crypto-related schemes to ensnare their victims, particularly older adults, which often ends in the victims losing tens of thousands of dollars with the click of a mouse.
Last year, people reported more than $9 billion in losses to crypto related fraud to the FBI—a two-thirds increase from the year before. Yet, the Trump administration directed the Department of Justice to deprioritize enforcement of anti-money laundering (AML) violations for crypto platforms and disbanded a task force on crypto crime. This means that, even as crypto accelerates a growing global crisis around online financial crime, the industry itself is getting a free pass, while we pay the cost.
Crypto Risks and Deregulation Could Spur Financial Crises
Congress sowed the seeds of the 2008 financial crisis by enacting dangerous deregulation that was justified as needed for so-called financial innovation, but in fact enabled excessive risk taking and reckless speculation. The result was that millions of families lost their jobs, savings, and homes, erasing more than $17 trillion in household wealth.
Crypto’s scam-laden, risky markets are full of the same kinds of risky speculation, which has already caused crashes on crypto platforms. The crypto industry has rigged the rules so that the big, connected crypto investors (called whales) get in early, grab the profits, and cash out while the little guy ( krill or minnows in industry parlance) loses big. In 2022, investors lost nearly two trillion dollars due to the failure and fraud of crypto firms like Celsius, Voyager, FTX and many others.
That crypto winter contributed to the collapse of several big regional banks in 2023, some of the biggest bank failures in history. But investors outside of the crypto markets were largely unaffected, due to regulators’ efforts to insulate the financial system from crypto’s big risks. In late 2025, another crypto flash crash wiped out $350 billion, mostly harming small investors, because the big players got out early again.
Now Trump regulators have rolled out the red carpet for crypto firms to essentially do whatever they please. Wall Street is cashing in, looking to ride the next crypto bubble. Industry-promoted crypto legislation would make this deregulatory, no-questions-asked, do whatever you want approach to crypto the law of the land.
Big Tech, Big Crypto & Wall Street Want Their Own Rules At Our Expense
The push for unfettered cryptocurrency is part of the convergence of Big Tech and big finance power players that are pushing to weaken the architecture of financial regulations and profit by squeezing their customers. This includes a new law they have already passed that allows crypto and Big Tech companies to issue their own private currencies — stablecoins — that will strengthen their grip on the economy.
And it includes letting crypto, fintech, and Big Tech platforms to get their own federally chartered banks. The biggest U.S. crypto exchange and the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty (half owned by the UAE fund) have already applied to get their own banks, but without being subject to the same oversight as ‘regular’ banks.
These legislative and regulatory gifts to the crypto industry wouldn’t just be bad for small crypto investors or victims of crypto fraud, they would undermine investor protections for everyone, imperiling the lifetime and retirement savings of workers and families.
Letting this corruption-driven giveaway to crypto billionaires and multi millionaires continue is a recipe for financial crisis. And once these crypto and Big Tech companies become enmeshed in the regulated financial system, the federal government is more likely to provide bailouts when they teeter or collapse — encouraging even more risky and speculative behavior that makes these crises more likely.
Crypto is Using Its Money to Try to Buy Political Outcomes and Dictate Policy
The crypto industry and venture capital billionaires spent millions in the 2024 election across the ballot, with millions more being donated to President Trump’s inauguration. They are now using their billions to secure special favors, demand legislative and regulatory giveaways to advance their dangerous agenda, and maximize their profits, no matter the costs to the rest of us.
While the influence of wealthy corporate interests in Congress is not new, the amounts of money the crypto industry is spending, the level of pressure it is applying, and the breadth of its demands take things to a whole new level. Policymakers and elected leaders need to stand up to crypto and prioritize the needs of their constituents and the public interest, not let crypto billionaires and multi millionaires write their own rules.