Trump is sitting on the same stage, and the two supervisors are on the same stage. What tone will this crypto summit set?
By Claude, Deep Wave TechFlow
Original title: Crypto Summit Preview: What new regulations will the SEC and CFTC heads agree on with the same stage when Trump sits in person?
Deep Tide Guide:On August 19, the White House will bring together crypto giants such as Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, as well as traditional finance executives such as Nasdaq and CME. Trump himself, SEC Chairman Atkins, and CFTC Chairman Selig are expected to attend. The summit comes on the eve of the Senate's 60-vote procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15. Industry commentator Nate Geraci determined that the White House no longer plans to wait for Congress.
On August 14, Semafor reporter Eleanor Mueller released news on X: The White House is preparing for a crypto industry summit, scheduled for August 19 (Wednesday). The source is “someone who knows the plan.” Politico followed up on the same day, citing three anonymous people familiar with the matter to confirm.
ETF industry commentator Nate Geraci then published a more complete list of invitees on X: Trump himself, SEC Chairman Atkins, CFTC Chairman Selig, and crypto industry executives such as Coinbase, Polymarket, Ripple, and Gemini. Traditional financial giants were also invited. Geraci is the president of The ETF Store and has been commenting on ETFs and crypto assets in mainstream financial media for a long time.
At the end of his tweet, he said, “The government is not going to wait for the CLARITY Act. Asking for support is fine, but I think they've decided to move forward no matter what. I expect this conference will send this signal strongly.”
Who was invited to the White House
Crypto and prediction market side: Coinbase, Ripple, a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Chainlink, Paradigm, Kalshi. Representatives from the industry organization Digital Chamber were also invited. Blockonomi's coverage also added Gemini, Robinhood, and Polymarket.
Traditional financial side: Nasdaq, CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), DTCC. Executives from these companies also serve on the CFTC's newly formed Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC).
Administration side: Trump himself is expected to attend, and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig confirmed their participation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may attend, but no final confirmation has been made.
The conference venue is the Eisenhower Executive Office building, close to the main White House building. The White House and neither of the two regulators have released an official agenda.
Compared to the March 2025 summit, Kalshi and Polymarket are on the list, and MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor is missing. The main characters changed a group.
The CLARITY Act and Trump's crypto wallet
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) addresses a problem that has dragged on for more than a decade: delineating the regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC over digital assets. Which tokens are securities managed by the SEC, and which are commodities managed by the CFTC. Blurred borders have caused US crypto exchanges to frequently remove tokens, unable to launch products in the US, and the company moved its headquarters overseas.
In July 2025, the House of Representatives passed 294 to 134, and 78 Democrats voted in favor. In May 2026, the Senate Banking Committee advanced 15-9. When it came to the full house voting session, it got stuck.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a cloture motion before the August 8 recess. On September 15, at 2:15 p.m., the procedural vote began, with a 60 vote threshold. The Republican Party holds 53 seats and is still 7 votes short of all in favor.
The market structure provisions have basically been finalized; what is really stuck is a few political issues.
Trump's crypto assets are the sharpest. Senators Thom Tillis (Republican) and Ruben Gallego (Democratic) drafted a bipartisan ethics plan requiring Trump to divest from the crypto business and allow state attorneys general to enforce restrictions on officials issuing digital assets. Trump has yet to approve it. The bill's main negotiator, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, called granting enforcement powers to state attorneys general a “red line” for the Republican Party.
Stablecoin yield terms are also disputed. Banking industry groups oppose allowing stablecoins to provide interest-based income, arguing that this blurs the line between payment tokens and deposit-like products.
The DeFi terms are also pending. Section 604 is meant to protect non-custodial developers from money transfer regulations, but there are still differences surrounding sanctions compliance and anti-money laundering.
Lummis explained in July why the Republican Party didn't rely on its own 53 votes to advance: “Only a bill co-built by both parties will survive future elections.” She revealed that the bill expanded from 68 pages of the 2022 Lummis-Gillibrand proposal to 616 pages, after nearly 11 months of bipartisan negotiations.
Predicting market pricing is not optimistic. The Polymarket contract shows that the CLARITY Act has a 19% chance of becoming law in 2026, down from its peak of 82% in February. Galaxy Research gave 10%, citing unresolved policy differences and limited Senate working days before the midterm elections. The Kalshi contract shows that the Senate has an 88% chance of voting before October 1, but the vote is not equal to passing.
Predict the first time the market sits at the table
Kalshi and Polymarket were invited to the White House for the first time at the White House level.
Kalshi is an event contract platform regulated by the CFTC, and Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market. The two companies have expanded rapidly over the past two years, but their legal position has always been sandwiched between the CFTC's powers to regulate derivatives and state gaming laws.
By inviting them, the White House is tantamount to putting the prediction market on the formal policy agenda.
On August 20, the second day of the White House summit, the CFTC's newly formed Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC) will meet for the first time in Washington. According to the CFTC website and Federal Register announcement, the conference was divided into three 50-minute panel discussions from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.: crypto asset regulation, AI applications in transaction compliance, predicting markets, and federal state jurisdictions. The CFTC also used emergency powers on August 11 to provide market stabilization measures in response to Kalshi's notice.
The White House set the tone, and the CFTC settled the discussion. The two days were aligned to put the crypto, AI, and prediction markets in the same policy framework.
The White House can't wait
The SEC and CFTC don't need to wait for congressional legislation to act. The two agencies can advance rule-making within the existing legal framework.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on August 7, “The momentum of this technology is growing regardless of the congressional calendar.” He named the use of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and perpetual futures as areas where activity can continue while legislation is at a standstill.
Galaxy research director Alex Thorn gave a more specific prediction on August 14: “Regardless of the outcome of the CLARITY Act, we expect the Commission to publish the text of the Reg Crypto and Innovation Exemption within the next few weeks, which is another reminder that the crypto industry is about to enter a positive regulatory environment.”
The SEC was scheduled to hold a public meeting on August 14 to discuss the proposed framework for certain crypto-related investment contracts, but it was cancelled before the meeting. No reason was given for the cancellation, and no new dates were announced. The cancellation occurred on the same day that news of the White House summit broke.
Even if the CLARITY bill falls short of 60 votes on September 15, the White House can still move forward on its own: the SEC continues to set rules for crypto assets, the CFTC collects industry advice and translates it into regulatory proposals through the Innovation Advisory Committee, and the White House maintains policy direction through executive orders and institutional guidance documents.
The White House won't stop because Congress gets stuck. This is the core signal that Geraci's judgment summit wants to send.
How was the summit in March last year different from this one
On March 7, 2025, Trump hosted the first crypto summit in the White House ballroom, the first president-level crypto industry round table in US history.
The theme of that summit was “Ending the War on Crypto.” Trump announced the establishment of a strategic Bitcoin reserve with an initial size of around 200,000 BTC (all confiscated by law enforcement), and promised not to sell bitcoins held by the government. He announced the end of “Operation Chokepoint 2.0" (the practice of regulators pressuring banks to cut off crypto company accounts) and asked Congress to pass stablecoin legislation before the August recess.
Participants include Coinbase's Brian Armstrong, MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor, Gemini's Winklevoss twins, Chainlink's Sergey Nazarov, Robinhood's Vlad Tenev, and Zach Witkoff, co-founder of Trump's own crypto company World Liberty Financial .
The market reaction was to “buy the expected sell fact.” Bitcoin fell 3.4% on the day to close at $86,394. Investors had expected the government to announce plans to directly buy new bitcoins, but only saw a “budget neutral” strategy.
There is no new news about strategic reserves this time, and there is no “end to war” narrative that needs to be repeated. The topic changed from “whether encryption is supported” to “exactly how to manage it.” There are more Nasdaq and CME on the list, more Kalshi and Polymarket, and the policy dimension of predicting the market.
Trump's own conflict of interest in crypto also remains.
The TRUMP token and the World Liberty Financial project sparked controversy in March of last year. One important reason the CLARITY bill is stuck in the Senate is that Democrats are asking Trump to divest from the crypto business. Tillis and Gallego's ethics plan is still awaiting a response from the White House. The White House made no public statement on whether discussions on whether the summit agenda included ethical provisions.
Bitcoin had little reaction after news of the summit broke. On August 14, BTC was near $63,406, falling 0.2% during the day. Ethereum is around $1,886. The CoinMarketCap Fear and Greed Index read 37, in the “fear” range.
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