House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) announced the creation of the first ever congressional crypto caucus on Monday, which he says will allow pro-industry lawmakers to vote as a unified bloc on pertinent legislation.
The move comes just a day after President Donald Trump announced he’s directed the Presidential Working Group to “move forward” with plans to establish a “crypto strategic reserve”—a federal stockpile of state-owned digital assets—which would include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, and XRP.
The caucus appears to be a bipartisan effort, led both by Emmer—a staunch crypto advocate—and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of the industry’s most vocal Democratic allies.
In a post to X on Monday morning, Emmer characterized the caucus as “a nonpartisan group of members ready to mobilize to support and defend open, permissionless, and private innovation in the United States.”
The inclusion of the term “private” in that definition would seem to be an attempt to smother any notion that as the U.S. government gets more involved in crypto, it might seek to develop technologies like a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
Major foreign bodies like the European Union have pushed ahead in developing digital currencies in recent weeks. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, moved to ban the creation of an American CBDC days after retaking the White House. Republicans have, for years, claimed that CBDCs would pose an existential risk to financial privacy.
Decrypt reached out to Emmer’s office regarding the House crypto caucus’ top priorities and the potential initial size of its membership but did not immediately receive a response.
House caucuses are formally organized groups of lawmakers who meet to pursue shared legislative objectives and tend to vote in blocs on key issues.
Dozens of such groups currently meet on Capitol Hill. They are shaped around identity groups (Congressional Black Caucus); ideological leanings (Congressional Progressive Caucus); foreign policy (Congressional Friends of Denmark Caucus); and, in many cases, industry representation (see: Congressional Cranberry Caucus, Chicken Caucus, and Natural Gas Caucus).
While crypto has notched a slew of high profile political victories in recent weeks—from the dismissal of key lawsuits targeting industry leaders, to Trump’s doubling down on a controversial federal crypto stockpile—the somewhat less flashy announcement of an industry caucus nonetheless brings the sector one step closer to more permanent status as a mainstay special interest group in Washington.
After years of extreme political volatility for crypto that have reaped both the lowest of lows and highest of highs, perhaps becoming a household staple akin to chicken or cranberries isn’t so unappealing.
