Federal agencies, not Congress, will set the tempo for U.S. crypto regulation over the next several years, according to the top lawyer at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, even as midterm voting leaves control of the legislature in play.
Maylea Ma, deputy general counsel at 1inch, said the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department are where "real movement" in digital-asset policy will originate. The elections may alter the prospects for the stalled CLARITY Act by reshaping committee priorities on Capitol Hill, but that would not change the near-term regulatory operating system, she argued.
Agency officials are holding more frequent conversations with crypto projects, Ma said. What that engagement cannot supply is the durability the industry sought from legislation.
"The long-term goal, of course, remains a statute that cannot be reversed every time a government changes," she said.
The durability question carries direct weight for institutional allocators. Michael Ho, co-founder of D3, the team behind Doma Protocol, said the absence of a market-structure law leaves U.S. policy resting on guidance that a future administration could withdraw.
"With the market structure bill stalled, US crypto policy continues to rest on agency guidance that a future administration can reverse, and that keeps serious capital waiting," Ho said. He added that "whatever the result, clear rules written into law are what will bring institutional capital into tokenized real-world assets."
Regulators have not stood still while lawmakers deadlocked. In August, the SEC proposed a framework for crypto fundraising that included exemptions for certain token offerings and a safe harbor from treatment as investment contracts. The following month, the agency updated staff guidance touching on token buybacks, crypto networks and staking receipt tokens.
The CFTC moved on a parallel track, submitting a crypto market regulatory plan for White House review on Sept. 17, two days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act.
Note: Dates reflect the sequence described in the source material.
The practical consequence for issuers, exchanges and intermediaries is that compliance expectations can tighten regardless of what happens in Congress. Proposals and staff bulletins do not carry the legal force of a statute, but in the absence of legislation they function as the working compliance map, shaping how token rights are documented, how networks structure participation and how staking-related products are described.
Ma's assessment implies that even a shift in the balance of power on Capitol Hill would not immediately rewrite the rules that govern day-to-day operations. The variable left open is how much stability institutions can assume. Investors may be willing to work within agency guidance once they understand it, but large commitments become harder to justify internally when the framework could be replaced after a political transition.
The next test comes as election results settle and fresh SEC and CFTC actions land: whether regulatory planning hardens into frameworks anchored in law, or the industry keeps depending on guidance that each administration can redirect.
