1. McHenry rules out an anti-crypto bill in the next House
Patrick McHenry, the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said on November 9 that he does not believe a crypto bill hostile to the industry can pass the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives that takes office in January. He argued that the incoming Congress is friendlier to digital assets than those of six and eight years ago.
The remarks came during a podcast appearance in which co-host Austin Campbell asked him about Senator Elizabeth Warren's renewed campaign against the sector. McHenry's answer was direct: he did not think it was possible to "pass an anti-crypto bill through the House."
The phrase "anti-crypto bill" covers a range of possibilities, from measures that would restrict how digital asset companies operate to attempts to undo laws already on the books. McHenry did not single out one proposal. His point was broader: whatever form such legislation took, he does not see a majority of the incoming House voting for it, regardless of which party holds the speaker's gavel.
That assessment matters because of who is making it. McHenry spent years at the center of financial legislation in the lower chamber and led the committee that writes most of the rules affecting banks, securities markets and, increasingly, digital assets. His reading of the vote count is that of someone who has had to assemble majorities on exactly these questions.
2. A new balance of power after the November 3 midterms
The backdrop to his comments is a sharp change in Washington. Democrats won both chambers of Congress in the November 3 midterm elections and are assured of at least 54 seats in the Senate. Contests in Mississippi and Alaska had not yet been called.
For the digital asset industry, the most closely watched consequence is in the Senate Banking Committee. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the sector's most persistent critics on Capitol Hill, is expected to take the committee's gavel in January. The panel has jurisdiction over banking, securities and much of the legislation that would define how crypto markets are supervised, which gives its chair considerable influence over what reaches the Senate floor and what does not.
On paper, unified Democratic control combined with a prominent critic in a key committee seat looks like the least comfortable arrangement the industry has faced in Washington for some time. It is the pairing that prompted the question put to McHenry in the first place, and the reason his answer runs against what many in the sector might have expected from the election result.
A committee chair can set hearing agendas, summon executives and regulators, and decide which bills are marked up. What a chair cannot do alone is turn a proposal into law. Any measure restricting the industry would still need a majority in the House, and that is the step McHenry considers out of reach.
3. Why does McHenry think the new Congress is more pro-crypto?
McHenry's view is that support for digital assets has grown inside both parties, leaving the incoming Congress more favorable to the industry than the ones seated six and eight years ago. In his telling, the change is not confined to Republicans; it runs through the Democratic caucus as well.
He paired that observation with a warning. The industry, he said, needs to "lock in" the political strength it has built, remaining popular enough that elected officials see no advantage in making it a target. The implication is that today's favorable arithmetic is not permanent and has to be maintained.
He also drew a contrast with the start of Joe Biden's presidency, when Democrats likewise held the White House, the House and the Senate. The progressive politics Warren has long championed, McHenry said, "doesn't have the same power and import" in the coming Congress as it did then. Some progressive priorities still carry real weight, he acknowledged, but in his judgment the anti-crypto ones are no longer among them.
4. Stablecoin law looks safe, market structure does not
On the question of whether existing crypto legislation could be unwound, McHenry was similarly skeptical. He described a repeal of the GENIUS Act, the law governing stablecoins, as unlikely. Stablecoins are tokens designed to hold a fixed value, usually one US dollar, and the statute gives their issuers a federal framework to operate under.
The rest of the market stands on less solid ground. Congress has not passed the Clarity Act, the bill meant to set the rules for how crypto assets are traded and to divide oversight between federal agencies. Its prospects have dimmed: Justin Slaughter of the investment firm Paradigm said on November 5 that the bill looks dead.
The two laws address different problems. The stablecoin statute deals with one category of token and the companies that issue it. A market structure law would reach much further, covering the exchanges, brokers and other intermediaries through which the wider range of crypto assets changes hands, and settling which agency supervises which part of that activity. One of those frameworks is in force; the other remains a draft.
Without that legislation, the industry's current operating environment depends heavily on the choices of the people running the agencies rather than on statute. That distinction sits at the heart of McHenry's argument about what regulators can and cannot do on their own.
5. What regulators can do without a crypto bill
McHenry laid out the limits plainly. Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), does not have authority over spot markets, the venues where tokens themselves are bought and sold rather than contracts tied to their prices. That power, McHenry said, is necessary to police the market properly, and it can only be granted by an act of Congress.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is in a different position. Paul Atkins, the SEC chair, "can go very far" in shaping how crypto trades, according to McHenry. The agency has broad discretion in how it applies securities law to digital assets, which means a sympathetic chair can accomplish a good deal through rules and guidance.
Discretion cuts both ways, however. Policy made by an agency can be remade by the next person to lead it. McHenry raised the scenario directly: a future president who is not explicitly supportive of crypto could replace the current regulators and steer policy back toward what he called a "Gensler era," a reference to former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, whose tenure the industry associates with an enforcement-led approach.
The protection against that outcome, in McHenry's account, would not be a regulation or a court ruling. It would be the presence of enough pro-crypto lawmakers in Congress to push back. That is why he tied the industry's long-term security to its standing with legislators, and why he urged it to preserve that standing now.
6. Credit card rate caps: a rare area where the votes exist
The conversation also turned to consumer finance, where McHenry sees the opposite dynamic. Asked by co-host Ram Ahluwalia about proposals to cap credit card interest rates, he said the votes exist in both chambers for some version of a cap, and also for the Credit Card Competition Act.
He pointed to an unusual coalition behind both ideas, naming Warren, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance as supporters. That alignment between a leading progressive senator and the Republican administration helps explain why McHenry treats these measures as live possibilities while dismissing anti-crypto legislation.
The proposals have a history. In January 2026, Trump said credit card interest should be held to 10% for one year, and he later endorsed the competition bill. That legislation would require banks with more than $100 billion in assets to give merchants a choice of two unaffiliated card networks for processing transactions, with the condition that the two cannot be Visa and Mastercard.
Both ideas target the cost of card payments from different directions. A rate cap limits what cardholders can be charged for carrying a balance, while the routing requirement is meant to give merchants leverage over the fees they pay each time a card is used, by ensuring that at least one alternative to the two dominant networks is available on every card issued by a large bank.
McHenry connected the subject back to digital assets. Stablecoins, he said, are now the place where competition in payments is coming from. In other words, the same tokens that Congress brought under federal law through the GENIUS Act are, in his view, beginning to challenge the incumbents that the card legislation is aimed at.
7. What comes next for crypto legislation
The new Congress is seated in January, when Democrats take control of the House and Senate and Warren is expected to begin leading the Senate Banking Committee. Her agenda there will offer the first test of McHenry's prediction, since hearings and proposals critical of the industry are within a chair's power even when final passage is not.
The larger open question is market structure. With the Clarity Act stalled, the CFTC remains without the spot market authority McHenry says it needs, and the rules for crypto trading continue to rest largely on the SEC's discretion under Atkins. That arrangement holds only as long as the current leadership does.
McHenry's message to the industry was therefore twofold. A bill aimed against crypto is, by his count, not passable in the House that convenes in January, and the stablecoin law is likely to survive. But the gains made through regulators are only as durable as the political support behind them, and he believes the sector's task over the next two years is to keep that support wide enough, in both parties, that reversing course never becomes attractive.