Key Takeaways
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The record-breaking U.S. government shutdown has frozen crypto regulatory progress.
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Altcoin ETF approvals and major bills like the CLARITY Act are now delayed.
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Agencies such as the SEC and CFTC are down to skeleton crews, slowing oversight and enforcement.
The U.S. government has officially entered day 37 of its longest shutdown in history, surpassing the 35-day record from 2018–2019.
What began as a standoff over Affordable Care Act subsidies and spending cuts has spiraled into a full-blown freeze on federal operations — and crypto, once again, is caught in the crossfire.
For an industry that was finally seeing regulatory clarity after years of uncertainty, the timing couldn’t be worse.
The shutdown has effectively pressed pause on crypto’s most critical year yet, derailing the momentum built by the landmark GENIUS Act and a flurry of pending bills designed to cement digital assets into U.S. financial law.
Both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are now running on fumes, with fewer than 6% of their staff working through the shutdown.
Approvals, enforcement actions, and rulemaking have all been shelved.
For crypto, that means no new clarity, no new approvals — and no guardrails.
Passed by the House in July 2025 with strong bipartisan support, the CLARITY Act was meant to split oversight between the SEC and CFTC — a foundational reform for the crypto sector.
The Senate was on track to finalize it before year’s end, but the shutdown has stopped formal negotiations cold.
Analysts now say a 2026 passage is more realistic, with prediction markets dropping the odds of a 2025 signing to just 25%.
Sixteen spot altcoin ETFs — including Solana and XRP — were up for final SEC approval this month. Now, they’re stuck in limbo.
With the SEC’s Corporation Finance division largely furloughed, filings can’t move forward, delaying what analysts had considered a near-certain approval wave.
If the shutdown lifts soon, approvals could hit in November; if not, the window may slip to next year.
The CFTC’s planned framework for spot crypto trading and tokenized collateral, announced in August, has also been frozen.
The initiative aimed to give crypto a regulated path to trade like traditional commodities by 2025, but no progress can be made while the agency remains partially shuttered.
The stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, signed into law in July, was supposed to usher in the first federal crypto framework.
However, with the Treasury, OCC, FDIC, and FinCEN all operating under limited capacity, its rollout is indefinitely delayed.
The earliest projected implementation now stands at January 2027.
Before the shutdown, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins had unveiled “Project Crypto” — a sweeping modernization plan for securities laws that would have finally integrated blockchain assets into mainstream finance.
That initiative, too, has been shelved.
Efforts to reform 401(k) crypto access, review leveraged ETFs, and create innovation exemptions are all paused until federal operations resume.
Meanwhile, the rollback of SAB 121, a rule that had discouraged banks from offering crypto custody, remains incomplete.
Banks eager to move into digital assets are left without supervisory guidance — another casualty of the government freeze.
For all the political drama, the implications extend far beyond Washington.
Every day the shutdown drags on, the U.S. slips further behind jurisdictions like Hong Kong, the EU, and the UAE, which are pressing ahead with clear and competitive crypto frameworks.
The White House’s own Digital Assets Council, tasked with exploring Bitcoin reserves and DeFi safeguards, has gone quiet.
Even informal talks have stalled, as furloughed staff await instructions that may not come for weeks.
If the shutdown ends soon, crypto watchers expect a flood of delayed actions — ETF approvals, rulemaking, and possible executive orders — to hit before Thanksgiving.
However, if Washington remains dark into December 2025, 2026’s defining crypto reforms may be pushed back.
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