Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, joins Remy Blaire to discuss efforts by the SEC and CFTC to align crypto oversight as lawmakers push forward market structure legislation in 2026.
Remy: Let’s get to the big story breakdown. SEC Chair Paul Atkins and CFTC chair Michael Selig will hold a joint event tomorrow in the nation’s capital to discuss harmonizing regulations for crypto and efforts to make the U.S. the global crypto capital. Both chairs say market participants have struggled with unclear and misaligned regulatory rules, and that the session will help ensure innovation grows on American soil while protecting investors and consumers. Now, Senate committees have been working on legislation to clarify the roles of both the SEC and CFTC, but negotiations have faced delays as well as challenges. Joining me this morning here in New York at the New York Stock Exchange is Cody Carbone, who is CEO of The Digital Chamber, a nonprofit trade organization committed to promoting blockchain adoption. Cody, great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Cody: Thanks so much for having me.
Remy: Well, here in the northeast, we are still digging out from that winter storm we got over the weekend. So hence some of the gatherings taking place in the nation’s capital have been delayed. But what are your expectations for this gathering taking place tomorrow?
Cody: It’s a fundamental change of where we’ve been. These two regulators need to work together. You just mentioned that we are in the middle of trying to get market, comprehensive, market structured legislation, passed a foundational regulatory framework for the digital asset industry. The two most important pieces there are the SEC and the CFTC. The two market regulators. There’s going to be so much rule-making authority delegated under this bill to those two regulators, and they’re going to have to work together. A lot of the rule-making authority under this bill is having them work together in different joint exercises and task forces. So it’s fantastic to see this is not something that we saw over the last administration. The two regulators have to work together in a coordinated effort to make sure this really can be the crypto capital of the world, and this regulatory framework can be implemented effectively.
Remy: Yeah. And, Cody, for our viewers out there who might not be as familiar with harmonized rules, what are your expectations for what will unfold and what impact will this actually have when it comes to retail investors, institutions, as well as regulatory bodies?
Cody: I think the impact for retail investors is massive and for institutions, this is going to be the comprehensive roadmap of how you’re going to operate effectively in the United States. If you’re interested in investing in a token as a retail user, you now can look at an effective regulated disclosure regime. You can look there’s more consumer protections that are being implemented here. So it is really massive. What I’m expecting is that this bill will have okay – SEC, CFTC, we want you to work together on implementing a consumer protection regime for any token that’s going to be listed. What does that mean? We want you over the next 18 months to get together and write those rules. And it will have a step by step guideline of what they need to present to Congress and what they need to present to the industry and the American people. So it really is a foundational step.
Remy: And you are just coming back from the World Economic Forum that took place last week in Davos, Switzerland. So you speak to many stakeholders within this ecosystem. And given these expectations as well as roadblocks when it comes to market structure, where do you think we go from here and what timeline?
Cody: It was fascinating being at Davos. One that we just mentioned. It was warmer there than it is here in New York right now. The conversation still centered around crypto, and it was about how the U.S. can be the crypto leader on the world stage. The only way we can do that is if we get market structure bill done. I’m looking at this first quarter to get it done. If we don’t get it done, then politics starts to drive policy. We’re in an election year and it gets really hard as members of the Senate start to go back to their home states to run for re-election, and all the talking points become more partisan. We have to get this done now because we need to administration proof the regulatory framework for digital assets.
If we don’t get this done now and we go into the next election. Who knows what will happen. We could have a Democratic House or a Democratic Senate. We might not get a market structure bill then And then you’re leaving it up to chance in 2028. We could go back to a Gary Gensler regime. We need to make sure that we codify some of the principles that the Trump administration wants, to make sure that the U.S. can be the crypto capital of the world into law. And that’s why we need this bill.
Remy: Yeah. So break this down for us given these expectations because we’re in quite a different environment in 2026 compared to last year here. even when we’re talking about retail investors, when we’re looking at crypto volume, it is significantly lower.
And given the event that happened in October 2025 regarding crypto, there’s a lot of focus moving forward on expectations and anticipations. But what do you think really needs to happen here And when it comes to stablecoin yield, do you think this is a policy issue?
Cody: It is a policy issue. It is the number one issue that is holding up this bill right now. There is not unified support on both the Republican side, on the Democratic side, for what should be done with stablecoin rewards. We are pro rewards. We would like to see rewards. There is nothing in the GENIUS act that prohibits banks from issuing rewards. And so right now, it really is a negotiation between the banks and the digital asset industry. That is the bill or that is the piece of this bill that is holding it up. Why? I think market structure legislation is so critical. mentioned administration proofing, but really it’s about building trust and legitimacy in the US crypto markets.
It’s really difficult right now if you’re going to issue a token or to list a token to feel confident because you don’t know whether you are issuing a digital asset security or a digital asset commodity, or if you’re listing that we need the definitions that this bill provides, we need a disclosure regime that this bill provides, and we just need the peace of mind that says, okay, this is here to stay.
The U.S. wants to keep it here domestically. We don’t want talent. We don’t want projects developers going offshore. We want them to build here and want to do so safely. And we want the innovation to flourish here.
Remy: Yeah. And of course, when we look ahead to the rest of this year, there are a lot of expectations. But you and I were here at the New York Stock Exchange. one of the key things when it comes to digital assets is institutional adoption in terms of market outlook.
But what are some innovations you’re watching? And given the fact that you’re just coming back from one of the biggest global gatherings, Davos, what are people actually saying about expectations for U.S. legislation?
Cody: Well, the innovations I’m watching, I would say tokenization, tokenization of real world assets. Tokenization of financial instruments, whether that is bonds or deposits or equities. We’re seeing that at rapid, rapid scale in terms of innovation. And then stablecoin adoption is massive for the stablecoin. The Treasury secretary said in Davos that he expects the stablecoin market to reach 3 trillion with a T by 2028, so that is huge. That’s why we need to get this bill done. This bill really just creates the basic guardrails of what the crypto market should look like in the U.S., and how they should be regulated. If we don’t get this bill done this year, we are leaving it up for chance and other jurisdictions are going to get ahead of us. We’re already seeing innovation in the UAE, in Singapore and EU. That’s all people talked about in Davos that the U.S. has the opportunity right now. They want the talent to be there. The talent has come back and the projects and the innovation have come back over the last year corresponding with the new administration. we don’t get this right and we leave this to partisan politics and we lose our chance, then all of that talent will go overseas.
Remy: Yeah. And Cody, as we look ahead to the rest of this year. I do want to zoom in on Q1 of 2025. So next week, hard to believe it is already the month of February. And I understand that the DC Blockchain Summit is taking place in March, in mid-March. So tell us about what we can expect.
Cody: Cherry blossom season in Washington DC. No better time to visit. March 17th and 18th we hold the DC Blockchain Summit. It is the largest gathering of policymakers talking about blockchain technology and digital assets. We will have members of the cabinet of the Trump administration. have over 30 members of Congress and then industry leaders sharing the stage side by side, talking about what’s next, talking about, okay, what do we need to do from a policy standpoint to make sure this technology can flourish here, whether it’s on AI and quantum or it’s on crypto or it’s on prediction markets, which have now become the hottest issue in DC, it’s the rarest place that you can see a member of Congress, a member of the administration, whether it’s the OCC, the SEC, the CFTC, sitting side by side with those industry leaders to talk about how we can work on this together.
Remy: Before we let you go, we have about 60 seconds here, and you mentioned prediction markets. So what do you expect to see unfold there when it comes to the regulatory outlook?
Cody: We want to see a federal regulatory regime. We want to see the CFTC really get involved. We don’t want to patchwork of state by state. There’s now the coalition of prediction markets. It’s a brand new advocacy organization in DC that are advocating for prediction markets. They’re getting a much larger voice. Just yesterday, Kalshi announced that they opened up a Washington, D.C., office with a head of government relations. They are going to be the hot topic in Washington for the next six months. It was crypto. It still is crypto. It was AI and especially agenetic AI. And now it is prediction markets. And everyone is talking about how crypto plays a part in prediction markets, how AI plays a part in prediction markets. It’s becoming a very hot issue. I imagine we will see policy action on this very quickly, if not this quarter.
Remy: Well, Cody, always great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining me as we kick off 2026.
Cody: Thanks so much, Remy.
Remy: My pleasure.