White House Working Group Releases Crypto Policy Roadmap

The President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets published a comprehensive policy report on Oct. 15 detailing legislative and regulatory recommendations for the US digital asset sector ¹. Formed under Executive Order 14178, the interagency panel urged Congress to pass market structure legislation based on the House's CLARITY framework, explicitly granting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight over spot markets for non-security digital assets ¹. The report also called on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC to use their existing authorities immediately to clarify federal rules on registration, custody, trading, and recordkeeping, alongside offering regulatory sandboxes and safe harbors for nascent financial products ¹. This follows parallel executive actions, including the US President Orders Creation of Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.

Banking, Tax, and Illicit Finance Reforms

The roadmap outlines significant shifts for depository institutions, recommending that banking regulators establish transparent pathways for crypto firms to obtain bank charters and Federal Reserve master accounts ¹. The panel advised regulators to align bank capital requirements with the empirical risks of holding digital assets rather than penalizing institutions simply for using distributed ledgers, while defining permissible activities across tokenization, digital asset custody, and stablecoin issuance ¹. The recommendations also instructed the Department of the Treasury and banking agencies to swiftly implement the GENIUS Act—enacted on July 18, 2025, to establish a federal framework for dollar-backed stablecoins—while urging Congress to pass the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act to permanently prohibit central bank digital currencies ¹.

On taxation and enforcement, the working group called for updated guidance from Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service covering Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, wrapped token transactions, and mining and staking activities ¹. It further asked lawmakers to classify digital assets under a dedicated federal tax regime that includes wash-sale rules, while cautioning against overbroad Bank Secrecy Act interpretations that could compromise user privacy or impede decentralized finance protocols ¹. At the time of writing, $BTC was trading at $82,303 while the broader cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.73 trillion.