In January 2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration obtained emergency clearance from the Office of Management and Budget to collect electricity consumption data from cryptocurrency mining facilities. In February 2024, it issued a formal request for comments on extending the data collection. On March 1, 2024, it withdrew the effort entirely — the result of a legal challenge from Bitcoin mining companies and a negotiated settlement in which EIA agreed to destroy the data it had already gathered.

Decentralized finance has operated for years in a regulatory environment that is, by any honest assessment, unresolved. No overarching legislative or regulatory framework specifically governs defi. Existing laws — the Bank Secrecy Act, securities statutes, commodities regulations — were written before the technology existed and have been applied to it through guidance, enforcement actions, and legal interpretations that have shifted substantially depending on the administration in office.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network established in 2019 guidance that money transmitter regulations apply to decentralized applications when those apps perform money transmission, stating that the rules apply “regardless of label.” A small number of defi entities have registered with any federal regulator, and Treasury acknowledged in a 2023 report that there is likely limited compliance with BSA/AML requirements across the sector. The gap between stated regulatory obligation and actual compliance is not ambiguous — it is documented.

Cryptocurrency legislation in the United States has been promised, debated, drafted, amended, shelved, redrafted, and promised again so many times that the industry had largely stopped treating legislative progress as meaningful until a bill reached the floor. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act’s passage out of committee with bipartisan support is a different moment. It does not guarantee enactment, but it represents the closest the United States has come to a comprehensive crypto regulatory framework since the asset class became economically significant.