State of Crypto Policy: what 27 founder interviews say changed between 2025 and 2026

Crypto Coin Show published 164 founder and executive interviews between January 1, 2025 and October 6, 2026. This report reads all of them for one subject, crypto policy and regulation, and asks what the people building in the industry actually said about the rules, and how that changed as Washington moved from enforcement to legislation, and then, when the legislation stalled, to rulemaking.

The short answer is that policy stopped being a background risk and became a product question. In 2025 guests talked about regulation as something to get licensed around or wait out. In 2026 they talked about specific laws, the GENIUS Act for stablecoins and the Clarity Act for everything else, and what each would let them build. The loudest voice in the set is Charles Hoskinson, whose 85-minute interview is the longest conversation in the dataset and the most detailed critique of the Clarity Act the show has recorded. Five months after he said the bill should not pass in its current form, it did not: the Senate failed to invoke cloture 49 to 50 on September 15, 2026.

This October 2026 update adds two episodes, Kresus and Fhenix, refreshes every policy status line and adds a company-by-company section on what the 2026 guests have built since recording. The thesis has not changed, but the ending has: the market-structure fight is now being settled by the SEC, the CFTC, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, not by Congress.

Who this is for: founders deciding where and how to launch, legal and compliance teams tracking the US and EU rulebooks, and investors who want to know which parts of the 2026 policy story are settled, which are in rulemaking, and which are still political. After reading you should be able to place any company’s regulatory position against the 27 founder conversations in this archive.

Key metrics

Crypto policy by the numbers

The dataset

The desk screened every episode by hand, starting from the archive’s Regulation & Policy tag and a keyword search of show notes, key takeaways and transcripts for legislation, regulators, licensing and jurisdiction. An episode is counted when policy or regulation is its main subject or a significant part of the conversation. Episodes where regulation came up in a single passing question are excluded. That leaves 27 episodes: 9 from 2025 and 18 from 2026. The two additions since the September edition are Kresus (October 5, 2026), on how banks are quietly building tokenization products while they wait for rules, and Fhenix (March 19, 2026), which the desk had originally filed under privacy technology but re-read as a compliance-by-design conversation after the Hoskinson episode made that theme central.

Measured against the whole show, policy conversations made up 10 percent of episodes in 2025 and 24 percent in 2026, more than doubling their share alongside stablecoins. The 2026 figure is for a partial year and two of the four most recent policy episodes were recorded in the three weeks after the Clarity vote, so the full-year share is likely to finish higher.

Spotlight: Charles Hoskinson on the Clarity Act

Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Input Output and Cardano, sat down with Ashton Addison in April 2026 for 85 minutes, five months before the Clarity Act failed in the Senate. His argument, in short, is that the bill as written would have protected today’s large networks while making it close to impossible to launch a new American one.

“If we do pass Clarity, everything is a security by default that’s a new project. That’s the bill that they’ve given us.”

Charles Hoskinson, Input Output

The problem with the bill. Under the draft’s mature-blockchain test, Hoskinson said, a new project starts life as a security and has no path to the liquidity, exchange listings, venture funding or community ownership it would need to mature. Existing networks such as Cardano, XRP and Ethereum would pass as commodities, which is why he called it a bill for the incumbents. His test for any crypto law: under this framework, would the winners still be winners? He argued that if Ripple or Ethereum were founded today, the bill would make them securities.

What he would do instead. Start with the definition of a security, which dates to the 1930s, and add a category for blockchain-based securities. Then use the blockchain itself as the disclosure mechanism, so rulemaking can allow zero-knowledge disclosure rather than prescribing a technology in statute.

Why the process broke. Hoskinson pointed to Wyoming, where he said more than 30 crypto laws passed with support from both parties after months of preparation. The federal effort, he said, skipped that groundwork, excluded Democrats and left agencies and companies to fight over the details inside the bill. He also warned that if Clarity did not pass in 2026, the next realistic window could be 2029.

Stablecoins are only half the arcade. He called stablecoins “fully regulated now” after GENIUS and MiCA, but compared them to arcade tokens with no games to play: without a market-structure law for the rest of crypto, there is little for regulated dollars to do onchain. His larger concern is compliance pressure to ban non-custodial wallets and centralize DeFi, which is why he pitched Midnight’s selective disclosure, demonstrated live on the show, as a way to prove compliance without giving up privacy.

How the argument aged. Two of Hoskinson’s predictions held and one is being tested. The bill did fail, and it failed on party lines: every one of the 49 votes to proceed was Republican, per The Defiant. The SEC did move toward using disclosure rather than a statutory test: its proposed Regulation Crypto Assets of August 18, 2026 would let an investment contract “cease to exist” once an issuer completes its promised managerial efforts and files a form, which is closer to Hoskinson’s “blockchain as disclosure” idea than to the mature-blockchain test he attacked. His 2029 warning is untested: the bill remains on the Senate calendar with a motion to reconsider on file, and Bitcoin.com News reported that sponsors must reintroduce it if it is not finished by January 2027.

Jump to the key sections: Stablecoins, GENIUS and the compliance dilemma (14:12) · What good crypto legislation looks like (21:06) · Why the Clarity process failed (27:05) · How Clarity could kill new American crypto (32:27) · XRP and Ethereum would be securities (44:32) · Midnight wallet and passport demo (1:05:34) · Full episode, transcript and chapters

Where policy stands in October 2026

Most of the 2026 interviews were recorded while the Clarity Act was alive and the GENIUS rulebook was still a set of proposals. Both have moved. The table below is the state of play on October 6, 2026, so that each guest’s comments can be read against what actually happened.

Two things in this table matter for reading the interviews. First, the March 17 taxonomy answers the question Hoskinson, Warden and Steinhardt were circling in the spring: a token is a security only when it is itself a conventional financial instrument or is sold with promises of essential managerial effort, and that status can end when the work is done. Second, after September 15 the agencies did not wait. Within three weeks the SEC granted the innovation exemption and the CFTC published its advance notice, and Forkast described the Treasury, SEC, Fed and CFTC working to a common January 18, 2027 effective date. The guests who argued for codified law over regulator discretion did not get their law; they got a great deal of regulator activity instead.

Six findings

1. Policy doubled, and it got specific

Policy episodes went from 10 to 24 percent of the show. The 2025 conversations were mostly about the change in mood: Coinbase’s Scott Shapiro described anticipation around a new SEC and CFTC leadership and said about 90 percent of assets Coinbase reviews still fail its listing bar, and the Blockchain Futurist panel with BTCS, OKX US and Maple Finance called the year a “total 180” from regulatory hostility. By 2026 guests were debating statutory text, drafts and rulemaking timelines. Chris O’Brien of Venable, recorded April 27, 2026, walked through what passed in 2025 and what did not, and described the return of SEC no-action letters as a practical tool founders could use while the statute was pending.

Shares of policy episodes by theme, 2026:

2. Stablecoin rules became the working part of policy

No 2025 policy episode was mainly about stablecoin rules; in 2026 they were the joint largest theme at 33 percent. The GENIUS Act is the one crypto law guests could actually build on. OpenPayd’s Lux Thiagarajah called enterprise stablecoin use the biggest shift he had seen since the Act. Higlobe’s Teymour Farman-Farmaian said stablecoins only “became legit” with it. Sam Hallene of CMT Digital described the Act as giving institutions the rules of the road to issue a compliant stablecoin and called stablecoins the marginal buyer of US Treasuries. Ground’s Reid Cuming walked through the Act’s ban on issuer yield and the window it leaves for distributors, the same issue that banks pushed the Senate to close in September. OpenTrade’s Jeff Handler, recorded in February before most of the rulemaking, made the point the others assumed: regulation is one input to trust in a stablecoin, and reserves, redemption and the issuer’s balance sheet are the rest.

The market data says the same thing from the other side. Total stablecoin supply reached about $322 billion in May 2026 and sat near $308 billion in August, with USDT and USDC around 82 percent of it, per the Spark tracker. That is a market growing into a law whose final rules are not written: the July 18, 2026 statutory deadline passed with every agency at the proposal stage, and the Act now takes effect on January 18, 2027 by default. The Fed’s September proposal restates the ban on paying interest “solely in connection with the holding, use, or retention” of a stablecoin, the exact line Cuming said distributors would have to build around. Our stablecoin report covers this in detail.

3. The fight moved to market structure, then to the agencies

With stablecoins settled, the argument moved to the Clarity Act, which would divide oversight of other crypto assets between the SEC and CFTC. Guests split on it. Nexo US COO Neil Steinhardt and Algorand Foundation CEO Staci Warden wanted it passed, with Warden calling GENIUS the biggest unlock so far and Clarity the next. Chris O’Brien of Venable described the SEC reopening no-action letters as real value for founders even without a law. Hoskinson argued the draft would do more harm than good. On September 15 the bill failed a cloture vote 49 to 50, over ethics provisions and election-year politics, with four Republicans joining every Democrat against it, per The Defiant. Prediction-market odds of passage in 2026 fell from 29.5 percent to 6.5 percent the same day.

What followed is the part of the story none of the spring guests predicted in detail. Rather than wait, the SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets in August, with a $5 million startup exemption, a $75 million annual fundraising exemption and a safe harbor that ends investment-contract status once the issuer has done what it promised. On September 17 it granted a five-year innovation exemption that lets tokenized US-listed stocks trade onchain, including through automated market makers, on venues that give notice rather than register. On October 5 the CFTC opened an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to register leveraged retail crypto trading federally, with Chair Michael Selig saying the agency cannot reach spot markets without Congress. For Kresus, whose founder told the show on October 5 that waiting for a green light costs a bank 18 to 24 months, this matters: the rules are arriving as exemptions and proposals rather than statute, and they can be used now.

4. Companies are coming back to the US

In 2025 the jurisdiction conversation ran outward. Echo’s Sam Dorrer pitched Isle of Man legal protection for digital assets, and Ndax and Legion built around licenses and KYC to stay on the right side of unclear rules. In 2026 it ran inward. Algorand moved its foundation to the United States, with headquarters in Delaware and a board that includes a former acting director of FinCEN, per the January 14, 2026 announcement, and Warden told the show that US employees can now hold ALGO. Nexo re-entered the US through a partnership with Bakkt, announced February 16, 2026. Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat said it built its own chain partly to control compliance jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Offshore structuring has not disappeared: Dave Rodman still walks founders through the BVI, Cayman and Panama, and warned that borders matter less in crypto than founders assume but enforcement can still reach them. VALR, the one African exchange in the set, is meanwhile expanding outward via a Cayman licence, which suggests the US return is a US story rather than a global one.

5. Bipartisanship is the real constraint

The most consistent warning across the 2026 policy episodes was political, not technical. Erik Balsbaugh of Open Frontier, a Democratic campaign operative turned crypto advocate, said that when an issue becomes partisan it swings with each election, and argued the industry has to do its own education with lawmakers rather than rely on them; he pointed to Wyoming as the blueprint and to grassroots organising as more durable than PAC spending. O’Brien said both parties support crypto legislation but with different priorities, Democrats on consumer protection and Republicans on innovation. Hoskinson said the Clarity process failed because Democrats were left out. The September vote bore that out precisely: zero Democratic votes to proceed, and the sponsors’ 126 concessions, by Bitcoin.com News’s count, were not enough to change that.

6. Outside the US, compliance is a patchwork

Guests building internationally described many regimes at once rather than one. OpenPayd pointed to MiCA taking effect in Europe while the UK lagged; by July 1, 2026 the MiCA transition period had closed with 244 authorised providers and ESMA telling unlicensed firms to wind down EU business, per ForkLog, and the Commission had already opened a review consultation on May 20 covering DeFi, lending, NFTs and prediction markets. VALR’s Farzam Ehsani walked through Kenya’s new virtual asset law, South Africa’s draft capital flow rules and a Nigerian market that is still mostly peer to peer; Kenya’s regulations were gazetted three weeks after the episode, on July 28, with a licensing deadline of November 4, 2026. ZIGChain holds licenses in South Africa and Abu Dhabi’s financial centres and treats licensing as its moat. Trust Wallet’s general counsel Shehram Khattak said the industry is “tiptoeing” around perpetuals and prediction markets across jurisdictions, with more guidance for perpetuals than for predictions. Higlobe described each emerging market setting its own limits on buying dollars. Kresus added the UAE and El Salvador to the map in October, where it described banks testing tokenized certificates of deposit in sandboxes rather than waiting for US statute.

The companies building it: 2026 on the show

The findings above are drawn from 27 conversations. This section takes the 12 companies from 2026 whose founders had the most to say about policy and asks three things of each: what they build, what they told Crypto Coin Show, and what has happened since. Where a founder’s claim and the public record disagree, we say so.

Input Output and Midnight (Charles Hoskinson)

What they build. Input Output engineers Cardano; Midnight is its privacy partner chain, built on zero-knowledge proofs with a hybrid public and private ledger. What he told CCS. On April 24, 2026 Hoskinson argued the Clarity Act would make every new project a security by default, that privacy and identity are prerequisites for institutional adoption rather than features, and demonstrated the Midnight wallet and passport live. Since then. Midnight’s mainnet launched March 30, 2026, per The Block, which reported about $200 million of Hoskinson’s personal funds behind development, early node operators including Worldpay, Google Cloud and eToro, and Monument Bank’s plan to tokenize up to £250 million of retail deposits on the network. Why it matters. Midnight is the practical form of his policy argument: if compliance can be proven by selective disclosure, the case for banning non-custodial wallets weakens. The SEC’s August proposal, which uses disclosure rather than network maturity as the test, sits closer to his position than the bill he opposed.

Open Frontier (Erik Balsbaugh)

What they build. A nonprofit advocacy group that positions crypto as a bipartisan issue and works the Democratic side of the aisle. What he told CCS. On January 13, 2026 Balsbaugh, its executive director and a veteran of Democratic campaigns, said Gen Z crypto ownership now exceeds 401(k) ownership, that the right framework sets guardrails rather than bans, and that Wyoming is the template for federal work. He named GENIUS and a market-structure bill as the 2026 priorities. Since then. The market-structure half of that agenda failed without a single Democratic vote on September 15. Why it matters. Open Frontier’s premise, that the industry must win Democrats rather than route around them, is the only strategy in the dataset the September vote did not falsify.

Venable LLP (Chris O’Brien)

What they build. O’Brien is a partner at the US law firm Venable and heads a crypto practice he said dates to 2016. What he told CCS. On April 27, 2026 he said enforcement task forces at the SEC and DOJ had been wound down, GENIUS had passed with rules unwritten, no-action letters had returned as a tool for startups in the gray zone, and founders should not let “a fast growing adolescent AI structure your company.” Since then. The path he described became a proposed rule: Regulation Crypto Assets, published August 18, 2026, with a $5 million startup exemption and a $75 million annual one. Why it matters. O’Brien was the first guest in the dataset to describe a workable US path without legislation. Six months later it is the only path there is.

Algorand Foundation (Staci Warden)

What they build. The foundation steers the Algorand proof-of-stake network, which Warden presents as financial infrastructure with six years of zero downtime. What she told CCS. On March 5, 2026 she said the foundation had moved from Singapore to the United States, become a for-profit entity and rebuilt its board with regulatory and payments experience, and that US clarity means staff can earn and hold ALGO. She called GENIUS the biggest unlock so far and Clarity the next. Since then. The January 14, 2026 announcement confirms a Delaware headquarters and a board chaired by Abra founder Bill Barhydt with former MoneyGram CEO Alex Holmes, former acting FinCEN director Michael Mosier and Jito Labs’ Rebecca Rettig. Where she and the record diverge. Warden wanted Clarity passed; it was not. But a board heavy on payments and AML reads as a bet on GENIUS and bank adoption, which is where the policy centre of gravity ended up.

Nexo (Neil Steinhardt)

What they build. A retail crypto lending, yield and exchange platform. What he told CCS. On May 28, 2026 Steinhardt, COO of Nexo US, explained why Nexo left the US and what a compliant return looks like: Bakkt’s infrastructure, a high-net-worth focus, and the view that codifying rules “creates an opportunity for companies to really come in and extend capital.” He put Nexo’s footprint at more than 100 jurisdictions. Since then. The February 16, 2026 announcement cited more than $371 billion in transactions processed and operations in more than 150 jurisdictions, with yield, exchange, credit line and fiat on-ramp products for US clients. Why it matters. Nexo is the cleanest test of the “come back to America” thesis. It returned on GENIUS, enforcement posture and a listed partner, four months before the market-structure bill it also wanted failed. The return did not depend on Clarity.

Robinhood Chain (Johann Kerbrat)

What they build. An Ethereum layer 2 on the Arbitrum stack that Robinhood controls end to end, carrying tokenized stocks, memecoins and lending. What he told CCS. On September 29, 2026 Kerbrat, Robinhood’s head of crypto, said the chain reached $1.6 billion in TVL within three months of its July launch, that gas is capped at 30 cents, that more than 70 percent of stock-token trading happens outside exchange hours, and that the main reason to build rather than rent was controlling compliance for complex products in every jurisdiction. Since then. The Block reported $431 million of TVL on July 21, three weeks after the July 1 launch, with tokenized stocks at $14 million and a DEX volume mix more than 80 percent memecoins. Where the claim and the data diverge. The $1.6 billion figure is Kerbrat’s and we could not verify it independently. More important for this report, a chain launched as compliance infrastructure for tokenized equities spent its first months trading memecoins. The SEC’s September 17 innovation exemption is the rule that would let the equities side catch up.

The Rodman Law Group (Dave Rodman)

What they build. A boutique Web3 law practice that structures token issuers and operating companies. What he told CCS. On August 4, 2026 Rodman laid out the three offshore homes his clients use, the BVI for token issuance, Cayman as a top company and Panama for flexibility, where he said crypto is “legal but not regulated.” He argued the Clarity Act fixes a small part of the problem, that believing regulators cannot reach an offshore entity is hubris, and that CARF tax reporting is the biggest compliance fight ahead for DeFi. Since then. The bill he called narrow failed, and Treasury’s August 18 GENIUS proposals bar non-permitted stablecoin issuers from selling to US persons wherever they sit, per Jones Day. Why it matters. Rodman is the dataset’s reminder that jurisdiction shopping buys operating flexibility, not immunity, and that tax reporting may bite before securities law does.

VALR (Farzam Ehsani)

What they build. Africa’s largest crypto exchange by trading activity, with spot, margin, perpetuals and custody. What he told CCS. On July 8, 2026 Ehsani, co-founder and CEO, said South Africa leads because it has a working licensing regime and VALR has been licensed there for years, that Kenya’s rules were “coming to fruition,” that Nigeria remains fragmented and peer to peer, and that banking access is still the hardest problem. Since then. VALR secured a provisional Cayman Islands VASP licence on May 25, 2026, alongside its FSCA Category I and II licences, and reported 1.8 million users and more than 2,000 institutional clients. Kenya’s regulations were gazetted July 28, 2026, splitting licensing between the central bank and the Capital Markets Authority, per Spencer West. Why it matters. VALR shows the US pattern in reverse: licensing first, market access second, and a regulator-by-regulator map rather than one law.

CMT Digital (Sam Hallene)

What they build. The crypto venture arm of Chicago trading firm CMT Group, an early backer of Circle, Coinbase and ConsenSys. What he told CCS. On March 27, 2026 Hallene, a partner, argued 2026 is the year crypto becomes boring in a good way, that stablecoins are now “the marginal buyer of US Treasuries,” and that GENIUS plus the SEC and CFTC posture gives institutions the rules of the road to issue compliant stablecoins and tokenize loans. Since then. CMT Digital closed its fourth fund at $136 million in October 2025 against a $150 million target, with more than 200 investments since 2017, per The Block. Why it matters. Hallene is the only investor in the dataset, and his thesis assumed clarity would come from regulators as much as from Congress. That is how it arrived.

Kresus (Dr Jordan Knecht)

What they build. Kresus Labs, founded in 2021, offers a consumer wallet and an enterprise stack of white-label wallets, tokenization and stablecoin settlement, and calls itself the execution layer for digital assets. What he told CCS. On October 5, 2026, the newest episode in the dataset, Knecht said banks look slow on blockchain because the work is happening in RFPs and pilots nobody can see, including tokenized deposits and certificates of deposit in the UAE and El Salvador. He put the cost of waiting for a regulatory green light at 18 to 24 months and said the hard problems are liquidity, custody, settlement and core-banking integration, not minting. Why it matters. Recorded after the Clarity vote and days before the CFTC notice, this is the dataset’s first read on the rulemaking-only world, and its advice, do not wait for a green light, is the practical corollary of finding 3.

OpenTrade (Jeff Handler)

What they build. London-based infrastructure that lets fintechs, neobanks and treasuries offer yield on stablecoin balances backed by assets such as money market funds. What he told CCS. On February 10, 2026 Handler, COO and co-founder, said stablecoins had moved from trading plumbing to a digital-dollar product for non-crypto fintechs, that Latin America is driving adoption, and that regulation is “a piece of” what makes a stablecoin trustworthy rather than the whole. Since then. OpenTrade raised $17 million on May 6, 2026, led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital with a16z crypto participating, after topping $200 million in TVL in 2025. Why it matters. OpenTrade sits where the GENIUS yield ban and the distributor exemption meet; whether and how a platform can pay yield on stablecoin balances is the rule most likely to decide its 2027.

Ground (Reid Cuming)

What they build. An API that lets banking and fintech apps embed onchain yield from protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Maple and Kamino without running their own blockchain stack. What he told CCS. On June 30, 2026 Cuming, CEO and co-founder and previously a Superstate co-founder, gave the clearest statement of the yield rule in the archive: issuers cannot pay yield to holders, distributors potentially can, but it has to be tied to activity rather than holding. Since then. Ground announced a $3.6 million pre-seed on June 24, 2026, co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi. Where the record is moving against him. Banks lobbied the Senate in September to close the distributor window and the Fed’s proposal restates the ban on paying for holding. The activity-based reading is still open, but it is the most contested line in GENIUS implementation.

Fhenix (Guy Itzhaki)

What they build. Confidential computing for blockchains using fully homomorphic encryption, so smart contracts can compute on encrypted data; Fhenix pivoted from a layer 2 to a co-processor it calls privacy as a service. What he told CCS. On March 19, 2026 Itzhaki, co-founder and CEO and formerly head of trusted execution projects at Intel, framed privacy as a compliance feature: institutions want confidential balances and strategies but also KYC and AML, so the goal is privacy “in a way that doesn’t impact the business part of it and maintains compliance.” Since then. Fhenix acquired the FHE research team Sunscreen on July 2, 2026. Why it matters. Itzhaki and Hoskinson make the same policy argument with different cryptography. If regulators accept that compliance can be proven without full transparency, the mandatory-custodian future Hoskinson feared loses its strongest justification; the innovation exemption’s allowance for self-custody of tokenized stocks is a small early signal.

Where the guests disagree

Pass Clarity or rewrite it. Steinhardt and Warden wanted a market-structure law on the books because codified rules reduce regulators’ discretion. Hoskinson wanted the definition of a security modernized first and said a flawed law would be very hard to fix later. Rodman sat between them: pass it if you can, but do not expect it to solve much. The September vote means the rewrite camp gets its wish by default, and the agencies are writing the first draft.

How much regulation is enough. Steinhardt said the absence of rules creates a wild west but too much stops innovation. Khattak compared the US favourably to Europe, where he said too many rules have held innovation back. OpenPayd argued the fragmentation itself is the barrier. Balsbaugh wanted guardrails, not bans, and compared the moment to the railroad era.

Privacy and compliance. Panther Protocol in 2025, and Hoskinson and Fhenix’s Itzhaki in 2026, all argued that cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs for the first two and homomorphic encryption for the third, can satisfy KYC without exposing users. The legacy view Hoskinson described, requiring banks or regulated custodians for all crypto use, runs the other way. Kresus’s Knecht, who works with banks, did not take a side but noted that the institutions are already testing.

Can you still go offshore. Echo built its product around a friendly jurisdiction; Rodman said offshore can work but called the belief that regulators cannot reach you hubris. VALR’s Cayman licence shows the two positions are not exclusive: a licensed operator can use offshore structure for reach rather than for distance.

Wait or build. Warden and Steinhardt moved their companies on the expectation of law; Knecht told banks not to wait at all. The record favours Knecht: Robinhood Chain, OpenTrade, VALR and Nexo all grew in 2026 on existing law plus agency posture, not on Clarity.

How we got here: a timeline

What the data means for investors and builders

The 27 conversations and the October 2026 rulebook suggest a short list of questions worth asking of any crypto company, or of your own.

• Which of the five SEC and CFTC categories does the token fall into? The March 17, 2026 interpretation makes this the first question. A digital commodity or tool sold without promises of managerial effort is not a security; the same token sold with a roadmap and a team is, until the work is done and disclosed.
• Does the business depend on a law that has not passed? Warden and Steinhardt built on the expectation of Clarity. Nexo, Robinhood and VALR grew on GENIUS, licences and agency posture. Ask which kind of bet you are looking at.
• If it pays yield on stablecoins, how? Issuers cannot pay for holding under GENIUS and the Fed’s proposal. Distributors may be able to pay for activity. OpenTrade and Ground live on that line; so does any neobank with a stablecoin balance product.
• Could it use the $5 million or $75 million exemption? Regulation Crypto Assets is proposed, not final, but it tells founders what the SEC thinks a compliant US token launch looks like: principles-based disclosure, capped raises, and a safe harbor at the end.
• Is the product leveraged, and for whom? The CFTC’s October 5 notice covers leveraged, margined or financed retail trading. Spot is outside. Perpetuals venues serving US retail should expect a federal registration path; prediction markets, as Khattak noted, have less guidance.
• Where is the entity, and where are the customers? Rodman’s rule: structure for flexibility, not immunity. Treasury’s GENIUS proposals reach any issuer selling to US persons, and CARF reporting is coming regardless of domicile.
• How does it prove compliance without exposing users? Hoskinson, Itzhaki and Panther all argue cryptography can do this. If a product’s compliance story is “we see everything,” ask what happens when institutional customers refuse to put balances on a transparent ledger.
• Is the company licensed where it says its users are? MiCA’s grace period is over; Kenya’s deadline is November 4, 2026; South Africa’s FSCA regime is mature. A marketing map with more countries than licences is a flag.

What to watch into 2027

If the 2026 pattern holds, the next year of policy conversations on the show will be about rulemaking rather than legislation: final GENIUS rules before the January 2027 deadline, the treatment of yield paid through third parties, how far the SEC and CFTC go without a market-structure law, and whether Clarity or a rewritten version returns after the midterms. Hoskinson’s warning that a missed 2026 window could push a deal to 2029 is the scenario to test against.

Glossary

GENIUS Act

The US stablecoin law signed July 18, 2025. It licenses payment stablecoin issuers at federal or state level, requires one-to-one reserves and bars issuers from paying yield for holding the coin. It takes effect by January 18, 2027.

Clarity Act

H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which would split oversight of non-stablecoin crypto assets between the SEC and CFTC. It passed the House in July 2025 and failed a Senate cloture vote 49 to 50 on September 15, 2026.

Cloture

The Senate procedure to end debate and move to a vote, which requires 60 votes. Failing cloture does not kill a bill but leaves it stuck on the calendar.

Token taxonomy

The SEC and CFTC’s March 17, 2026 joint interpretation sorting crypto assets into digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins and digital securities, with only the last treated as securities by nature.

Investment contract

The Howey test category under which a non-security token can still be sold as a security if buyers invest money in a common enterprise expecting profits from the issuer’s essential managerial efforts.

Mature blockchain test

The Clarity Act mechanism that would have treated a token as a commodity only once its network met decentralisation criteria. Hoskinson’s critique was that new projects could never pass it.

Regulation Crypto Assets

The SEC’s August 18, 2026 proposal creating exemptions for crypto investment-contract offerings of up to $5 million over four years or $75 million a year, plus a safe harbor once managerial efforts are complete.

Innovation exemption

The SEC’s September 17, 2026 five-year conditional exemption letting tokenized securities venues trade tokenized US-listed stocks onchain without registering as an exchange.

MiCA

The EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. Its transition period ended July 1, 2026 with 244 authorised service providers, and the Commission opened a review in May 2026.

Selective disclosure

Proving a specific fact, such as residency or accreditation, with a cryptographic proof while keeping the underlying data private. Midnight and Fhenix build this with zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption respectively.

CARF

The OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework for automatic exchange of crypto tax information between countries. Dave Rodman called it the biggest compliance fight ahead for DeFi.

Methodology

Sources

1. SEC: SEC Proposes New Regulation Crypto Assets, August 18, 2026
2. Jenner & Block: SEC and CFTC Issue Landmark Joint Interpretation on Crypto Asset Classification, March 2026
3. Sidley Austin: SEC Issues Innovation Exemption for On-chain Trading of Tokenized U.S.-Listed Stocks, September 2026
4. CoinDesk: SEC rolls out innovation exemption for tokenized securities trading venues, September 17, 2026
5. Crowdfund Insider: CFTC Seeks Public Comment on ANPRM Relating to Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, October 5, 2026
6. Forkast: The CFTC Builds Its First Crypto Market Structure and Deliberately Leaves the Spot Market Outside, October 2026
7. American Banker: Fed proposes stablecoin rules under GENIUS Act, September 25, 2026
8. Jones Day: US Treasury Proposes GENIUS Act Rules for Stablecoin Issuance, Offer and Sale, August 2026
9. Chapman and Cutler: GENIUS Act Rulemaking Tracker, July 16, 2026
10. The Defiant: Senate Blocks Clarity Act 49-50 With No Democratic Votes to Proceed, September 15, 2026
11. CoinDesk: Crypto Clarity Act Flames Out in Failed U.S. Senate Vote, September 15, 2026
12. Bitcoin.com News: Clarity Act Isn’t Dead, but Washington Is Running Out of Calendar, September 2026
13. Eco: Clarity Act Timeline, House Passage, Senate Progress and What’s Next, August 2026
14. Crypto Briefing: Hester Peirce departs SEC after years of advocating for digital assets, October 2, 2026
15. Cahill: MiCA the Sequel, Brussels Reopens the EU Crypto Rulebook, June 18, 2026
16. ForkLog: MiCA transitional period expires in the EU, July 1, 2026
17. Spencer West: Kenya’s Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026, August 2026
18. The Block: Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson unveils privacy-preserving Midnight partner chain, March 30, 2026
19. PR Newswire: Algorand Foundation Announces Return to the United States with New Board, January 14, 2026
20. Business Wire: Nexo Returns to the U.S., February 16, 2026
21. The Block: Robinhood Chain tops $430 million in TVL, July 21, 2026
22. The Block: OpenTrade raises $17M to expand stablecoin yield infrastructure, May 6, 2026
23. The Block: Superstate co-founder raises $3.6 million pre-seed for Ground, June 24, 2026
24. Chainwire: VALR Secures Provisional VASP License in the Cayman Islands, May 25, 2026
25. Crypto Coin Show: Charles Hoskinson on why the Clarity Act misses crypto’s real needs, April 24, 2026

Appendix: the 27 episodes

Disclosure: No company in this dataset had any input into this report. This report is for education and information only and is not investment, legal or tax advice.