On September 15, 2026, the United States Senate rejected a motion by supporters of the crypto industry to limit further debate and proceed to a final vote on the “CLARITY Act.” Due to that very wise and welcome decision, Congress now has time to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the crypto industry and adopt legislation that is urgently needed to address the industry’s unacceptable dangers to our financial system, investors, and consumers.
In this Report and the accompanying Crypto Market Structure Study (“Market Study”), the Cryptoskeptics Forum analyzes the global crypto industry’s market structure and presents findings that raise significant concerns about (i) the global crypto industry’s expanding market power, excessive political influence, and pervasive misconduct, and (ii) the potential future development of an unaccountable global crypto cartel. In the absence of strong regulation and effective oversight, the global crypto industry poses unacceptable threats to financial markets and economies worldwide.
The international crypto industry’s structure is dangerously concentrated, both horizontally and vertically. In addition, foreign crypto firms dominate important segments of the crypto industry and are largely immune from U.S. regulation. The crypto industry’s concentrated structure and its dominance by unregulated foreign firms pose great dangers to the U.S. and other nations, including the risks that crypto firms will (i) severely undermine the stability and integrity of financial markets, with catastrophic consequences for investors and consumers, (ii) significantly impair the effectiveness of law enforcement authorities in combating financial crimes, and (iii) seriously weaken the ability of central banks to control their currencies and monetary policies.
In light of the crypto industry’s intolerable threats, Congress should reject all attempts to revive and implement the CLARITY Act’s toxic provisions. Instead, Congress should restore a level playing field for all financial institutions, with proper guardrails, by repealing the GENIUS Act and approving legislation that requires crypto firms to comply with the same essential prudential rules and public safeguards that govern federally-insured banks, securities broker-dealers, investment companies, and regulated securities exchanges. Our policy recommendations are based on the generally accepted principle of “same activity, same risk, same regulatory treatment.” That essential principle should apply with equal force to providers of crypto-assets as it does to traditional financial institutions and traditional investment assets.
As we approach the November midterm elections, candidates across the country are finally addressing the American people’s concerns about the crypto industry. Much of the congressional criticism of the crypto industry has focused on the Trump family’s extraordinary profits from their crypto enterprises. Due to the crypto industry’s failure, on September 15, 2026, to obtain a favorable vote on a motion to invoke cloture and proceed to a final Senate vote on the “CLARITY Act,” Congress and the American people can now undertake a comprehensive assessment of the crypto industry and a careful consideration of governmental policies that are urgently needed to address the grave threats created by the industry’s dangerous structure and pervasive misconduct. Remedial legislation is essential because the Trump Administration is currently attempting to implement some of the CLARITY Act’s worst provisions through rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”), although serious questions have been raised about both agencies’ authority to adopt such rules.
In examining the crypto industry, members of Congress should not focus solely on the Trump family’s highly controversial efforts to promote (and profit from) their crypto enterprises, although those activities have cast a very dark cloud over the Trump Administration and the crypto industry. Members of Congress and the public must undertake a broader review, leading to the realization that the crypto industry has dramatically expanded its economic and financial power and political influence over the past two years, with the enthusiastic support of President Trump, who promised to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.”
The crypto industry has pursued an aggressive, highly-coordinated political strategy since 2024, which has enabled the crypto industry to dictate the Trump Administration’s decisions on financial regulatory policies. The crypto industry spent more money in 2024 to support the election of Donald Trump and crypto-friendly members of Congress than any other industry, including the petroleum and pharmaceutical industries. The crypto industry has again been the top industry contributor to federal political campaigns in 2026. The crypto industry has also built an extensive lobbying operation, which has enjoyed remarkable success in influencing the decisions of Congress and federal regulatory agencies.
The crypto industry’s massive investments in political campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures have produced very lucrative returns for the industry, including appointments of crypto advocates to senior positions in the federal government, pardons for convicted crypto executives, dismissals of pending enforcement actions against crypto firms, passage of the GENIUS Act, and executive orders and agency rules authorizing the issuance and sale of stablecoins and other crypto-assets without the crucial protections that apply to traditional investment assets. As a result of the deeply misguided deregulatory policies championed by the Trump Administration, the crypto industry currently presents an even greater threat to the stability of the U.S. financial system and the welfare of U.S. investors and consumers than it did in 2022 and 2023, when Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX/Alameda crypto empire collapsed along with several other large crypto firms, igniting a widespread crisis that led to the failures of three large U.S. banks and inflicted massive losses on investors and households.
This Report and the attached Market Study examine the hazardous structure and pervasive misconduct exhibited by the crypto industry, as well as the dangers created by the crypto industry’s immunity from effective regulation and its highly coordinated efforts to capture control of the federal government’s financial policies. As this Report documents, the concerted efforts of leading crypto firms have created an extraordinarily effective political juggernaut, producing legislative and regulatory victories that have greatly benefited the crypto industry, despite the industry’s discredited record and enormous risks.
This Report and the accompanying Market Study present a detailed structural analysis of the global crypto industry, which consists of six key market segments. The levels of market concentration in two crucially important segments—Centralized Exchanges and Stablecoin Issuers—would satisfy the criteria for “highly concentrated” markets under current federal merger guidelines. Those concentration levels indicate that dangerous clusters of economic and financial power exist in both segments and potentially the entire crypto industry.
This Report and the Market Study also find that the international crypto industry is highly concentrated in its vertical relationships, with extensive connections among crypto brokers, dealers, exchanges, and other platforms. The industry’s vertically integrated structure creates toxic conflicts of interest and hazardous concentrations of systemic risk, which threaten the stability and integrity of the U.S. financial system and the welfare of American investors and consumers.
This Report and the Market Study further conclude that the crypto industry is dominated by large foreign crypto firms that are not subject to effective oversight by U.S. regulators. For example, Binance and Tether are headquartered in foreign jurisdictions that have weak or nonexistent regulations, and their operations are not supervised by U.S. agencies. Binance is the largest global crypto exchange (accounting for about 40% of all spot trading volumes on centralized global crypto exchanges), and Tether is the largest global stablecoin issuer (accounting for approximately 60% of all outstanding stablecoins). Binance and Tether have established close connections with the Trump Administration and with businesses controlled by Trump family members and their close associates. Binance and Tether have received highly favorable regulatory treatment since 2024, despite widespread reports about their continued involvement in money laundering and terrorist financing. The successes achieved by Binance and Tether, despite their deeply tarnished records, indicate that powerful foreign crypto firms can effectively leverage their dominant market positions and political clout to obtain virtual immunity from effective regulation in the U.S. and other developed nations. As discussed below, the crypto industry’s international scope and aggressive use of regulatory arbitrage pose serious threats to global financial stability and the integrity of financial markets around the world.
To our knowledge, this Report and the Market Study provide the first publicly-available systematic analysis of the global crypto industry’s structure. The international crypto industry’s hazardous structure and pervasive misconduct must be carefully evaluated by Congress, candidates for Congress, and voters to understand the grave and unacceptable dangers that the crypto industry poses to the U.S. financial system and American consumers and investors.
The crypto industry has aggressively lobbied for lenient and dangerous laws and policies that would expand their opportunities to offer extremely risky and volatile crypto-assets to ordinary Americans and their pension funds and retirement funds. This Report maintains that the crypto industry should not be allowed to operate in the U.S. unless it complies fully with the same rules and requirements that apply to traditional financial institutions and traditional investment assets. If there are concerns about the accuracy of the publicly available data on which the Market Study is based, Congress should use its investigative authority to obtain the requisite data by performing a comprehensive investigation of the crypto industry. Indeed, Congress could ensure that government agencies and the public have access to such data by requiring crypto firms to comply with the same reporting and disclosure requirements that apply to federally-insured banks and regulated securities firms.
This Report concludes that effective regulation of the global crypto industry would be extremely difficult to achieve unless Congress requires the crypto industry to comply with the same legal rules that govern federally-insured banks and regulated securities firms. Due to significant limitations on the availability of antitrust and other legal remedies, and the absence of effective international oversight, Congress must pass legislation to prevent domestic and foreign crypto firms from continuing to offer crypto-assets to U.S. citizens and residents unless those firms comply with the full array of legal protections provided to depositors in federally-insured banks and customers of regulated securities firms.
This Report also warns that the crypto industry’s control over the supply of stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies could severely undermine the ability of central banks to maintain effective governance over their currencies and monetary policies. Without effective regulation and supervision by federal agencies, the crypto industry will continue to exploit its dangerous concentrations of economic, financial, and political power and threaten global economic and financial wellbeing.
Accordingly, our primary policy recommendations to Congress are that (1) Congress should reject all further efforts to enact or implement the highly dangerous provisions of the CLARITY Act, and (2) Congress should repeal the GENIUS Act and approve legislation that would require providers of crypto-assets to follow the same rules and comply with the same public safeguards (including examination, supervision, reporting, and disclosure requirements) that govern federally-insured banks, securities broker-dealers, securities exchanges and clearing facilities, and mutual funds, based on the respective functions performed by each of those entities. Requiring providers of crypto-assets to follow the same "rules of the road" that apply to traditional financial institutions would (i) maintain the stability and integrity of the U.S. financial system, (ii) preserve the effectiveness of crucial protections provided to U.S. depositors, investors, and consumers under existing banking and securities laws, (iii) uphold and enforce the principles of fair competition established by existing antitrust laws, (iv) ensure the ability of law enforcement agencies to identify and prosecute financial crimes, regardless of the particular financial instruments used to commit those crimes, and (v) terminate the crypto industry’s ability to dictate U.S. financial policies and obtain “light touch” regulatory treatment. Our policy recommendations are based on the generally accepted principle of “same activity, same risk, same regulatory treatment,” which the Financial Stability Board endorsed as an essential premise for regulating crypto-assets.