| gm Bankless Nation,
Fresh off key primary races, we're getting a clearer picture of the anti-crypto wave poised to hit Congress. We've got a breakdown today of the races to watch. Today's Issue ⬇️ - ☀️ Need to Know: Tempo Goes Live
The Stripe/Paradigm L1 hits mainnet. - 🗣️ Analysis: Mapping Out Crypto's Midterms Fate
How a Dem congressional takeover could impact crypto.
p.s. Thanks to Figure. Explore Democratized Prime while earning ~9% APY or take out a Crypto-Backed Loan at 8.91% interest rates with 12-month terms! Sponsor: MegaETH — Crypto has new apps, finally.
. . . NEED TO KNOW Tempo Goes Live - 🚦 Stripe Deploys Tempo L1 Blockchain to Mainnet. Stripe's highly anticipated L1 blockchain has finally arrived, and comes equipped with a new standard for agentic payments.
- 💦 Official S&P 500 Perps Contract Is Coming to Hyperliquid. Trade[XYZ] is now the first and only officially licensed perpetual futures provider for the S&P 500 index.
- 🐙 Kraken Reportedly Pauses IPO Amid Tough Market Conditions. The crypto exchange's previously announced IPO is on pause, according to CoinDesk sources.
📸 Daily Market Snapshot: The war in Iran's ever-shifting vibes took a big bite out of stock markets Wednesday and sucked momentum away from ETH and BTC. | Prices as of 6pm ET | 24hr | 7d |  | Crypto $2.44T | ↘ 4.5% | ↗ 2.0% |  | BTC $71,288 | ↘ 4.5% | ↗ 0.8% |  | ETH $2,204 | ↘ 5.7% | ↗ 6.3% |
. . . ANALYSIS Mapping Out Crypto's Midterms Fate Just how bad are these midterm elections looking for the crypto industry? With increasing likelihood of a Democratic sweep across the House and Senate in the midterm elections, I wanted to take a closer look at what the existing polls are signaling for the crypto industry's future. So, to find answers, I turned to both prediction markets and resources like Stand with Crypto (SWC) – a database for candidate positions on our industry. Putting these together paired well with building a dashboard, so once I had the data, I turned to Cursor to build out the frontend, Claude Code to stitch the logic, and Vercel for final deployment. While I’m still filling in gaps in the data, I've now built out a database tracking most races where Democratic candidates are leading mapped to their crypto stance and committee implications. This has helped form an initial picture of what the policy landscape may look like in a few months – workable on the surface, but hosting some deep structural issues on closer examination. The Surprising PartFirst off, there's more Democratic support for crypto than you might expect, at least on some bills. In the House, 101 Democrats (roughly 48% of the caucus) voted for the GENIUS Act. In the Senate, 18 Democrats (40%) voted to advance it to passage. That's a real coalition. But it's bill-specific, and it evaporates when it comes to the committees: the places where legislation effectively begins. This is a problem. Where Leverage Comes FromCrypto legislation never goes straight to the floor. Stablecoins, market structure, SEC authority: all of it must pass through committee first. House Financial Services (HFSC) and Senate Banking are the two rooms where crypto bills live or die (market-structure bills also require input from the Agriculture Committees for the CFTC side). Chairs decide what gets hearings, what reaches markup, and what quietly expires in procedural limbo. A chair who opposes a bill doesn't need a vote to block it, they can simply choose not to schedule it. Recent Republican chairs have demonstrated how this authority can be used to move legislation forward. Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott advanced the GENIUS Act out of committee and helped guide it to Senate passage. Former House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry championed FIT21, the first major crypto market-structure bill to clear the House. Current House Financial Services Chairman French Hill has continued that momentum, advancing related market-structure efforts like the CLARITY Act through the House (though it remains stalled in the Senate) and holding ongoing hearings on digital assets and capital markets modernization. Now, let’s consider what happens if Democrats sweep. The majority party controls every committee chair in Congress. No exceptions. If Democrats flip the House, they will chair every House committee. If they flip the Senate, they will chair every Senate committee. Within the majority party, chairs are typically chosen by seniority. As you may know, both have voted against every major crypto bill they've encountered. Warren led objections to the GENIUS Act during markup, on the grounds of it posing “threats to our national security." Waters called it, “a full-scale crypto con.” And here's the key dynamic for the House: when party control flips, subcommittees fully reset. The majority gains influence over freshman assignments and overall ratios. Waters would have significant influence in assigning representatives to HFSC seats and subcommittees: including who leads Digital Assets. Sure, she can't pick every single member solo (leadership and caucus have input), but she'd easily steer it toward her preferred anti-crypto voices. The existing Democratic bloc on HFSC already skews hostile: Brad Sherman, Stephen Lynch, Emanuel Cleaver, Sylvia Garcia. Pro-crypto members like Jim Himes, Bill Foster, Ritchie Torres, Josh Gottheimer, and Vicente Gonzalez can resist, but under a Waters chairmanship, they don't control the calendar. Senate Banking looks slightly better. Warren as chair, but with a mix of pro-crypto (Mark Warner, Ruben Gallego, Angela Alsobrooks), anti- (Tina Smith), and mixed members. One narrow upside: if Democrats flip the Senate, Sen. Gallego, who has a pretty good profile on SWC, would likely take the Digital Assets subcommittee gavel. Warren would still control the full committee agenda, but Gallego could create some space for pro-crypto voices in the subcommittee process. The Races That Actually MatterThe pro-crypto Democrats who exist mostly don't sit on House Financial Services or Senate Banking. They can vote for bills that reach the floor. They can pressure leadership (though most are unlikely to go to bat for crypto given how partisan the issue has become). But they can't force a committee chair to move legislation. A handful of contests meaningfully affect committee composition: The Midterms Bottom LineThe House picture is grim. An 85% chance of a Democratic flip likely means Waters chairing HFSC, with the power to reset subcommittee assignments and control the calendar. The bright spots are narrow: Menefee potentially flipping Green's seat, Gonzalez holding his. These give some pushback, but they don't change who holds the gavel. The Senate is the remaining territory, and it got worse last night. Juliana Stratton beat Raja Krishnamoorthi in the Illinois primary. Based on Stand with Crypto, and the fact that Fairshake spent $7 million against her, it’s safe to say Stratton is firmly anti-crypto. What's frustrating is the broader picture. Pro-crypto Democrats exist. ~47% of Democrats across both chambers voted for the GENIUS Act, while 37% voted for CLARITY in the House. But floor votes aren't where bills get made or killed. Committee votes on market structure went party line. The support that exists doesn't translate to the rooms where it matters. Crypto shouldn't be this partisan. The pro-crypto Democrats exist. They're just not where the gavels are. This dashboard is still being built out and I’ll continue to provide updates on it over the coming weeks and months. But even with some data missing, the dynamic is clear: the House is likely trouble, and the Senate is where effort should be directed.
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