Fourteen different industry groups have spent a combined $47M on lobbying since January. RPF News maps the competing interests and explains why comprehensive crypto legislation remains gridlocked despite bipartisan appetite for a bill.

There is broad bipartisan agreement in Congress that the cryptocurrency industry needs a comprehensive regulatory framework. There is almost no agreement on what that framework should look like. The reason, in large part, is money.

RPF News analyzed lobbying disclosures, campaign contribution records, and meeting logs obtained through FOIA requests to map the competing interests that have turned what should be a straightforward legislative exercise into a multiyear stalemate. The picture that emerges is one of an industry spending lavishly to shape regulation in its favor — but unable to agree among itself on what "favorable" means.

The largest spenders fall into three camps: centralized exchanges like Coinbase, which want clear rules that legitimize their existing business models; DeFi protocols and their backers, which want to preserve the right to operate without intermediaries; and traditional financial institutions, which want crypto brought under existing regulatory frameworks that they already know how to navigate.

Each camp has its own preferred legislative vehicle, its own allies on Capitol Hill, and its own lobbyists. The result is a three-way stalemate in which any bill that satisfies one camp alienates the other two. Meanwhile, the SEC continues to regulate through enforcement, an approach that all three camps agree is inadequate but none can agree on how to replace.