President Donald Trump is expected to join a White House meeting with cryptocurrency and prediction-market executives on Wednesday, placing federal agencies at the center of Washington’s next moves on digital-asset policy as the Senate’s market-structure legislation remains stalled.
Bitcoin was trading near $60,000 ahead of the meeting, holding in a narrow range after falling roughly 50% from its October peak. The subdued market has left traders watching Washington more closely for policy decisions that could shape how crypto companies operate in the United States before Congress agrees on a comprehensive legal framework.
The White House session is expected to include senior executives from major crypto firms, prediction-market operators, and leading financial regulators. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins are among the expected attendees.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may also attend. Trump’s potential in-person participation would give the gathering more political weight than a routine policy discussion between agencies and industry groups.
Agencies move as Congress delays market rules
The meeting comes one day before the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee is scheduled to convene on Thursday. The committee includes representatives from cryptocurrency, financial-services, and prediction-market companies, giving federal officials another venue to hear arguments over how existing rules apply to newer financial products.
The back-to-back meetings reflect a near-term policy track increasingly driven by regulators rather than lawmakers. Agencies can issue exemptions, guidance, enforcement priorities, and rule proposals under existing authority, though those measures would not settle the jurisdictional questions that the Clarity bill is intended to address.
The bill seeks to establish a clearer division of authority between the SEC and CFTC over digital assets and their trading platforms. Its supporters argue that defined rules would reduce the legal uncertainty facing token issuers, brokers, custodians, and decentralized-finance developers.
Progress has slowed in the Senate. The legislation did not receive a vote before the August recess, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune has scheduled a procedural vote for mid-September to move it toward a potential full Senate vote.
Alex Thorn of Galaxy Digital has reduced his estimate of the bill’s chance of passage in 2026 to 10%, reflecting the harder political path after the delay. The legislation’s outlook has also weakened in market-based forecasts, where implied odds of enactment this year have fallen from levels near 80% earlier in 2026 to roughly 20%.
The contrast between the legislative timetable and regulatory calendar gives the White House meeting added practical relevance. Companies may receive earlier signals on the direction of SEC and CFTC policy than on the eventual shape of a statute.
SEC proposals could offer a temporary testing route
The SEC is expected to publish text in the coming weeks for proposals described as “Reg Crypto” and an “innovation exemption.” The concepts could allow firms to test products, including blockchain-based equities, without complying with every existing disclosure and protection requirement at the outset.
Such an exemption could offer companies a controlled route to launch or trial products that do not fit neatly within rules written for conventional securities markets. The details will determine its usefulness. Firms would need clarity on eligibility, customer safeguards, limits on product size or duration, and the conditions for moving from a pilot program to full compliance.
A narrowly designed exemption could accelerate experimentation while keeping the SEC’s investor-protection standards in place for larger or more established offerings. A broader program could attract greater industry participation but would likely face more scrutiny from lawmakers and consumer advocates concerned about gaps in disclosure or custody protections.
The proposals would also test how far the SEC is willing to adapt existing securities rules without congressional action. That approach may help address immediate product questions, but it leaves unresolved whether a token should fall under SEC, CFTC, banking, or other federal oversight in the first place.
Stablecoin concerns remain part of the policy debate
Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citigroup, has called for the Clarity bill to become law while warning that stablecoin rewards could affect banks’ deposit bases. Her concern reflects a central issue in the stablecoin debate: whether payment tokens offering yield-like incentives could pull funds away from traditional bank deposits.
Stablecoins are increasingly tied to questions beyond crypto-market trading, including payment systems, Treasury markets, bank funding, and consumer protection. A federal framework would need to address reserve standards, redemption rights, issuer supervision, and the treatment of rewards programs without simply applying bank rules to every token-based service.
Lyn Chen of XS.com said the bill’s movement shows that work on a digital-asset framework remains active in Washington, even as its legislative path has become more uncertain. The White House meeting may offer an indication of whether the administration intends to press Congress for a final bill or rely more heavily on agency-led measures in the interim.
Bitcoin faces a policy-sensitive market backdrop
Andrea Cobelli of Amina Bank identified a resistance zone between $67,000 and $70,000 for Bitcoin, while describing the Clarity bill as a potential catalyst for breaking the market’s current stalemate. Cobelli also noted that the bill’s prospects have weakened as the issue has become more partisan.
A White House discussion will not resolve that political divide or produce a market-structure law on its own. It could, though, establish which concerns officials want addressed first: token classification, trading-platform oversight, stablecoin safeguards, prediction markets, or exemptions for new blockchain-based products.
With a Senate vote not expected until mid-September, Wednesday’s meeting may become the clearest immediate signal of how the administration plans to manage crypto policy through federal agencies while Congress remains unable to complete the legislative framework industry participants have sought.
For deeper context on U.S. crypto rules after Trump’s meeting, explore the possible future of crypto regulation in the US.
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