Two recent shepherds of U.S. crypto oversight — Republican former lawmaker Patrick McHenry and Democrat former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chief Rostin Behnam — shared a view that there’s a tremendous amount of work still to do on U.S. crypto legislation but that now is the moment to do it.

McHenry, in a discussion hosted by Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, said that Senator Tim Scott, the South Carolina chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who leads the House Financial Services Committee, present the industry an ideal opportunity to establish sound law.

«And I think you should take it,» he said, arguing that solid law will act as a better future defense than regulatory stopgaps that aren’t associated with congressional action. «Let’s ward against bad regulators taking these seats that could try to kill digital innovation.»

Last year, McHenry backed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), which has become the foundation for this year’s congressional effort on crypto’s market structure. The former lawmaker, who now advises industry investor a16z, predicted a «wicked hot summer for legislating.»

McHenry also had a direct hand in last year’s stablecoin legislation that’s returned with new versions in the House and Senate. Though they’re mostly aligned with each other, he said a «major brewing battle» is shaping up between U.S. stablecoin issuer Circle (USDC) and the global leader, Tether (USDT), over how non-U.S. issuers would be handled.

Both want to be in business after Congress passes a law, McHenry said, «and they’re both working actively on Capitol Hill to make their point of view heard.» He said he expects a «reasonable landing spot» will be found in a U.S. regime for Tether that allows it to deal with U.S. investors.

«You shouldn’t blow up an international product that desires to be dollar-denominated; I don’t think that’s a rational outcome,» he argued, though the matter may take more months of negotiating among lawmakers. The debates over the meat of highly technical policies will eventually transition from «science to art» as lawmakers do what they can to convert ideas into law, McHenry said.

Meanwhile, the industry keeps going, largely unregulated at the federal level. As Behnam noted: «You can’t stop the industry from doing what it’s doing, whether it’s trading the tokens or developing protocols and whatnot, and that’s been going on for years.»

He was never able to get on the same page with former Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler to initiate crypto policies, and he offered a reality check for those now waiting for laws from a cooperative Congress: They’ll also have to be implemented by the regulators.

«It’s going to take a while,» he said, starting with the market structure legislation that may still be several months away. «But then it kicks over to the harder part, where you’re going to have the market regulators and the bank regulators writing rules, which often can take over a year, even at the quickest clip.»

Read More: U.S. CFTC Chief Benham’s Last Words to Crypto: Protect the Investors

Truth Social, the social media platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), which is majority-owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, is considering launching a cryptocurrency.

«As part of our rewards program, we’re exploring the introduction of a utility token with a Truth digital wallet that can initially be used to pay for Truth+ subscription costs, and later be applied to other products and services in the Truth ecosphere,» the company said in a letter to its shareholders on Tuesday.

DJT barely reacted to the news; the stock is down 0.52% in after-hours trading.

The company is also looking into launching exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that will combine equities with cryptocurrencies, the letter reiterated.

Trump’s entourage has released a panoply of crypto products over the years, including memecoins, NFT collections, and a DeFi protocol.

Read more: Trump Media Wants to Partner with Crypto.Com for ETP Issuance

The crypto market experienced another relatively calm day on Tuesday despite widespread pessimism about the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs on the economy.

Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1% in the last 24 hours, trading at almost $95,400 and within sight of topping $96,000 for the first time since the second half of February. The CoinDesk 20 — an index of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization except for stablecoins, exchange coins and memecoins — rose 1.1%, with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) outshining the rest of the index by surging 6.3%.

Crypto stocks had fairly muted performances Tuesday, with Coinbase (COIN) and Strategy (MSTR) up 0.9% and 3.3%, respectively. Janover (JNVR), continued to benefit from its SOL accumulation strategy, rising another 16%.

The stock market also continued its recovery from the early April-tariff induced panic, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each adding 0.55%.

For some observers, the market’s performance has seemed unanchored from the wave of economic data coming in that suggests that U.S. economic activity is slowing down due to the tariff policies unleashed by the White House.

Consumer confidence came in at its lowest level since May 2020, according to a Conference Board survey, while the consumer outlook hit its lowest point since 2011. Meanwhile, the JOLTS survey indicated that job openings had fallen to 7.19 million in March versus an expected 7.5 million.

In fresh tariff news, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said today that a trade deal had been reached with an unspecified country, though the deal still needed to be ratified with that country’s leaders.

Some shade on the rally

“Hard to fathom how blind the market really is,” Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise, posted on X.

“A Fed cut means nothing if U.S. creditworthiness is permanently impaired by the global community as resulted by dollar weaponization,” Park said, referring to recent speculation on whether the U.S. central bank will be forced to lower rates to counter the effect of Trump’s tariffs. “That’s the mispricing we are talking about here,» he continued. «The myopic focus on whether [we] are getting a fed cut in May/June is completely irrelevant if the notion of the risk-free as we know it is fundamentally challenged forever, which means cost of capital globally is going higher.”