The Blockchain Association on Thursday sent a letter to Senate and House leadership urging Congress to pass bipartisan digital asset tax legislation — the group's first broad push on taxes since the Clarity Act failed in the Senate last month.

Signed by Chief Policy Officer Lindsay Fraser and addressed to Majority Leader John Thune, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the letter argues that the tax rules governing the 67 million Americans who hold digital assets "were written for a different era." Under current IRS guidance, digital assets are treated as property, meaning every sale, exchange, or payment can trigger a taxable event and a capital gains calculation no matter how small the amount. The group launched the campaign alongside a new website, TaxClarityforAmerica.com, built to help constituents contact their representatives. The full letter is available as a PDF.

What the Association Is Asking For

The requests track the industry's long-standing tax agenda: a de minimis exemption for small transactions, cash treatment for stablecoins, taxation of mining and staking rewards at sale rather than at receipt, broker reporting limited to firms that hold customer assets — a narrower scope than the broker definition Congress enacted in the 2021 infrastructure law — and wash sale rules that would close the loss-harvesting loophole that exists because the current rule covers securities but not digital assets, without catching everyday transactions.

The letter also calls for a safe harbor for foreign traders on U.S. exchanges, a mark-to-market election, and R&D credit eligibility for blockchain development.

Notably absent is an endorsement. Two tax bills are somewhat in play, and the association named neither.

Where the Tax Bills Stand

The House moved first. One day after the Clarity Act failed in the Senate, the Ways and Means Committee approved the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, H.R. 10357, a 114-page package from Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO). The bill exempts network fees under $10 from capital gains reporting, with a carve-out for taxpayers who made more than 5,000 transfers in the prior year, and extends wash sale and constructive sale rules to digital assets. Qualified dollar stablecoins are exempt from the wash sale rule.

The package omitted the provision the industry wanted most. Rep. Mike Carey's Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, H.R. 9175, which would have allowed miners and stakers to defer tax until they sell, appeared in an early discussion draft but was absent from the text the committee released on September 14. Instead the bill classifies validation rewards as ordinary income, taxable on receipt. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), who had proposed capping the deferral at five years, voted for the package and said it leaves the question open for further work.

The Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and the Digital Chamber had asked the committee in June to pass the Carey bill without changes. The committee did the opposite.

The Senate has its own version. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) introduced the ADAPT Act on September 30, with Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Bernie Moreno, and Tim Scott as cosponsors. It exempts purchases made with GENIUS Act stablecoins from gain or loss, sets the same $10 fee threshold, and applies wash sale rules with grandfathering for existing holdings and exemptions for mining and staking rewards. The bill sits in committee.

Lummis's earlier bill, S. 2207, which would create a $300 per-transaction de minimis exemption capped at $5,000 per year, has been pending in the Finance Committee since June 2025.

Neither chamber's bill contains the exemption for small bitcoin purchases that the industry made a centerpiece at Bitcoin 2026. The House bill's $10 threshold covers fees, not purchases; the Senate bill's spending exemption covers stablecoins, not bitcoin. The Bitcoin Policy Institute and others have argued that any de minimis rule should cover bitcoin, and Thursday's letter asks for a "meaningful" exemption without naming a figure.

A Tight Legislative Window

Congress is in recess until after the November 3 midterms. When members return, they will face a lame-duck session measured in weeks, and crypto taxes will compete with government funding and whatever else leadership decides to clear before the 119th Congress ends. Lummis, the Senate's loudest voice on digital asset taxes, retires in January 2027.

The Clarity Act's collapse shapes the landscape. The market structure bill passed the House 294-134 in July 2025, then stalled in the Senate for more than a year as the banking lobby fought the crypto industry over stablecoin yield and Democrats pressed for ethics language aimed at the Trump family's crypto ventures.

The cloture vote on September 15 failed 49-50. No Democrat crossed party lines, and Republicans Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, and Jerry Moran voted no. Sen. Thom Tillis switched his vote so he could file a motion to reconsider, which keeps the bill alive on paper and little more.

With market structure off the table, the industry has shifted its lobbying toward what might move. Tax is the obvious candidate: the House package cleared committee with bipartisan votes, and its wash sale provisions raise revenue, giving tax writers a reason to attach them to a larger vehicle. Punchbowl News reported Thursday that the association's refusal to back either bill signals the industry wants more than what Congress has produced.

Regulators continue to fill the gap in the meantime. The OCC issued its final GENIUS Act rule on Wednesday, and the SEC and CFTC have been setting market structure policy through rulemaking and enforcement in the absence of a statute.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.