We Have to Fight Differently in the House Than We Did in the Senate

In the Senate, bad crypto language for the infrastructure bill was pushed by the US Treasury Department behind closed doors. Our community reacted and some senators introduced an amendment that improved (but did not entirely fix) the wording. Then some other senators introduced a competing, watered-down amendment, probably as a tactic to confuse. Negotiation ensued. This postponed voting, ultimately until senate rules dictated that one senator could block the amendment. And one senator did, a senator who is not running for re-election.

To be clear, the Senate managed to get Treasury’s wording into the bill and block amendment without any senator who is up for re-election being on record against it. We—our community, organizations, companies, and lobbyists—acted honorably and were taken advantage of by dishonest maneuvering. We need to do things differently with the battle in the House of Representatives.

With the House, they have to remove the crypto language completely. No amendments with endless wording tweaks—it all just has to go. With this, we have something to fight for, and fight we will. Not just calling and e-mailing—we will go and talk to our representatives. We will carry signs in front of their offices. We won’t let up. We have the will, and we have the motivation.

Our demands are clear: Take out the bad crypto language or vote against the bill. That’s it. Everyone can understand this demand, and every representative has to vote on it. Nobody gets to hide.

We can do this. Right is on our side. The new infrastructure spending in this 2700-page bill is around $550B. Cryptocurrency’s market cap is almost $2T and growing. The cryptocurrency part of the bill is more important than everything else in it. And we have the power. A large minority of Congress already wants to vote against the bill, so all we need to do is bring, say, 10% to our side. Let’s call it 50 representatives, one per state. We can get 50 wavering representatives behind our clear and right demands.