Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith will resign next month from her role at the prominent crypto-focused industry group that helped elect the U.S.’ first pro-crypto president to lead Layer-1 blockchain Solana’s new policy push. 

Smith will begin a new role as president of Solana’s Policy Institute on May 19, she said Tuesday in an X post. Her last day at the Blockchain Association will be May 16. 

The Blockchain Association’s Board of Directors has already begun the search for Smith’s successor, the group’s communications lead Curtis Kincaid told Decrypt.  

“We’ve grown from a small group of passionate advocates into a leading force in Washington, D.C., and beyond,” Smith said in the X post. “Blockchain Association today is stronger than ever.” 

Founded in 2018, the Blockchain Association is one of several industry groups that has fought to advance the crypto industry’s interests on Capitol Hill. Their efforts helped lead to the election of pro-crypto President Donald Trump last November—a watershed moment for an industry that had previously existed on tenterhooks.

But as digital asset firms’ clout in Washington D.C. has grown, so too have calls to enshrine even more of the industry’s interests into law. To meet that demand, a few Layer-1 blockchains have launched policy institutes. Now, Solana is joining them.

Edited by James Rubin

House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-AR) said Monday that the personal cryptocurrency dealings of President Donald Trump and his family have made drafting legislation for the novel sector “more complicated,” in a rare rebuke of the president’s personal activities by a key member of congressional Republican leadership.

Hill specifically named the president’s meme coin and stablecoin projects as two endeavors that have negatively impacted the work of lawmakers racing to create rules for the digital assets industry.   

“They have made our work more complicated,” Hill told reporters Monday, in reference to those projects.

Since returning to power, Trump and his inner circle have rapidly expanded their crypto portfolios at the same time that the president is determining policies with direct impact on those same assets and sectors. In recent months, Trump and business partners have launched a Solana meme coin and an Ethereum decentralized finance platform called World Liberty Financial, which recently announced its own stablecoin. 

Meme coins are speculative crypto assets that derive their value from cultural significance—and which the SEC recently likened to “collectibles”—while stablecoins are digital assets designed to keep a steady peg to the U.S. dollar.

Trump and his family have already netted hundreds of millions of dollars from such endeavors; unrealized earnings from the same projects number in the billions. 

Trump’s existing businesses have also aggressively expanded their exposure to crypto in the same period. Last week, the company that runs the president’s Truth Social media platform announced a partnership with Crypto.com to offer crypto ETFs. 

Just this morning, the president’s son, Eric and Don Jr, inked a deal to launch their own Bitcoin mining venture. 

At the same time, the president has signed multiple executive orders with direct impact on the crypto industry. Further, White House officials are currently, at his direction, working with Republicans in Congress to help shape key pieces of legislation that will create, for the first time, an American crypto regulatory regime. 

Earlier this month, the president’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, dismissed the president’s personal crypto endeavors as “irrelevant” to industry regulation. 

But it appears patience among congressional Republicans over the scope of those lucrative schemes may be waning. The House Financial Services Committee is set to mark up its version of proposed stablecoin legislation, the STABLE Act, on Wednesday, and will soon consider a newer version of a market structure bill, according to comments made by Chair Hill Monday.

A parallel stablecoin bill is also currently making its way through the Senate. Such bills, if passed into law, would for the first time offer a clear path to legal certainty for a variety of crypto projects and companies, based on their compliance with new rules currently being ironed out. Their passage is anticipated to bring with it a wave of investment and support for the crypto industry from traditional finance institutions that until now have been waiting on the sidelines.

Though those bills possess bipartisan support, Trump’s personal business dealings have offered resistant Democrats a convenient means to protest their passage. 

Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) denounced the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial stablecoin, USD1, as a “grift,” and tied the project to pending crypto legislation. 

“Congress should step up and fix the current stablecoin bill moving through the Senate that will make it easier for Trump—and Elon Musk—to take control of your money,” she said.

The U.S. SEC on Thursday dismissed enforcement actions against three major crypto firms, filing joint stipulations to drop the cases with prejudice, making the decisions final and not subject to refile.

Kraken, ConsenSys, and Cumberland DRW LLC all saw their respective lawsuits terminated simultaneously, marking the latest reversal in the agency’s regulatory approach toward digital assets.

The regulator has also officially closed its case against the exchange Crypto.com.

Disclaimer: ConsenSys is one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt.

The dismissals form part of a broader pivot in U.S. crypto regulation under the Trump administration, following similar ends to cases against Coinbase, Robinhood, Uniswap Labs, and OpenSea.

In a statement following the dismissal of civil enforcement action against Coinbase, acting SEC Chairman Mark T. Uyeda said these decisions were part of the agency’s “ongoing efforts” to “rectify its approach” and develop crypto policy in a “more transparent manner.”

Notably, the SEC emphasized that these dismissals do not “necessarily reflect the Commission’s position on any other case.”

The decision ends a “wasteful, politically motivated campaign,” Kraken said in a statement when the resolution for their case with the regulator arrived. 

Kraken further characterized the SEC’s move as something that lifted “uncertainty” over what could have “stifled innovation and investment.”

The exchange provider later revealed its prospects of going public, potentially coming in as the second crypto firm to do so after Coinbase.

The resolution ends a tumultuous period for the industry. Each of the three companies had faced serious allegations under the prior Gensler regime.

Kraken was charged in November 2023 with operating an unregistered securities exchange, broker, dealer, and clearing agency.

ConsenSys faced accusations in June 2024 of unlawfully offering securities through its MetaMask Staking service.

Cumberland DRW, a Chicago-based trading firm, was sued in October 2024 for allegedly acting as an unregistered dealer handling over $2 billion in crypto assets.

Under acting Chairman Uyeda, the SEC had established a task force and actively engaged with the crypto industry, signaling a departure from the previous administration’s enforcement-focused approach.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair