The next few weeks set the stage for 2026
The government shutdown certainly created an air of uncertainty.
There WAS a lot of momentum in Washington D.C. as it pertains to putting a digital asset framework bill together in 2025.
This momentum came on the heels of an executive order that was put into action at the beginning of Trump’s term. The findings from the order helped piece together what the White House calls Project Crypto. And within days we witnessed the SEC, CFTC, Treasury Bessent, and Congressional representatives all publicly showcase a unified vision and effort. A vision that not only green lighted crypto, but brought the financial system onchain.
This compelled the Democrats in the Senate to begin talks on the framework bill early on with the hopes of a vote coming at the end of October. But then the shutdown began. It initially felt like a pause, but after a few weeks it turned into a loss of momentum.
This is now forcing Republican lawmakers to try to get this done in an accelerated timeline with a very limited amount of days in session left in the year. Democrats know this and gained some leveraged, mostly because pushing the framework into 2026 makes passage more difficult given it’s an election year.
Why it's a partisan issue is likely more about Wall Street having certain Democratic allies, not because it's against their views - money talks.
Now, the bill is still top of mind for the administration and many within Congress. We can see they are looking to generate momentum once again with the President putting some talking points into the media and the Senate Ag committee putting a draft out yesterday.
However, the most contentious issues between Democrats and Republicans still remain up the air. In particular, the sections in the bill around DeFi and Anti-Money Laundering language is yet to be written out. This needs to get hammered out quickly if there is a chance for passage.
If momentum does materialize, the markets look receptive to this good news. That’s because you have some surrounding catalysts that would create strong tailwinds for the digital asset markets.
These catalysts being a possible Federal Reserve rate cut with odds of a 25bps cut currently at 67%, the TGA account adding liquidity into markets as the shutdown ends, the end of quantitative tightening beginning in December per the Federal Reserve, and crypto markets haven’t produced substantial gains in 2025 so we could see firms position themselves in December for 2026 instead of profit taking for tax season like last year.
All in all, the shutdown has been a wet blanket of late. It caused a loss of momentum that has translated to digital assets missing out on much of the gains realized in equity markets.
If we see momentum around a digital asset framework being passed this year alongside the other macro catalysts, 2026 looks very strong for crypto to not only play catchup, but outperform.
But what we need to also realize is the market is becoming more discerning. Yesterday, BlackRock's digital asset rep mentioned the long tail of poor assets in the industry. And then you had Uniswap announce plans to improve the quality of their native token.. on the same day. This was likely a blessing from their stakeholders in response to what is being heard from entities like BlackRock.
This is your signal on what the flow of capital over the next year will be looking for - quality cryptocurrencies.
What is quality? Projects that balance supply and demand to try and form market equilibrium for their tokens. These are currencies, not equity. If they were going to go towards the equity route, you would have seen Uniswap lean into revenue share, not token burns. Again, that's signal.
2026 is shaping up to be a very strong year for digital assets. I'm sure we'll see memecoins and other speculative assets within crypto run at some point, but the first and second waves that lift the tides will be fundamentally better.
Let's see how the next few weeks in D.C. shape up as they could spark an end of the year rally that starts a mega 2026 run.
Your Pulse on Crypto,
Ben Lilly