Maxine Waters, Elizabeth Warren, Shontel Brown, and Michael Bennet each hold Stand With Crypto F-ratings. If Democrats sweep, they could chair four committees that control crypto legislation.
Alpha Score of 49 reflects weak overall profile with moderate momentum, poor value, moderate quality, moderate sentiment.
Maxine Waters is probably coming back. If Democrats flip the House, the California congresswoman reclaims the gavel at the House Financial Services Committee. That changes the math for anyone betting on crypto legislation surviving the next session.
Waters has already telegraphed her position. She called the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act the “Calamity Act.” Her argument is straightforward: the bill eases regulations in ways she believes gut consumer protection. She is consistent, and she has the seniority to act on it.
Kalshi puts Democratic House odds at 84%. The Senate is murkier – Kalshi has not pinned it down the same way, and control there looks more contested. If both chambers flip, the picture for crypto gets complicated.
It is not just Waters. Representative Shontel Brown could chair the House Agriculture Committee. Senator Elizabeth Warren might run the Senate Banking Committee. Senator Michael Bennet is a possible pick for Senate Agriculture if Amy Klobuchar leaves for the Minnesota governor's race, which looks likely. All four hold “F” ratings from Stand With Crypto, the industry's main advocacy group. Four committee chairs. Four F's.
Brown has voted against multiple digital asset bills, including the Clarity Act, on the grounds that they do not deal seriously with corruption risks. She is not a swing vote that could be peeled off with tweaks to the bill language.
Warren is harder. She has opposed crypto measures even when her own Democratic colleagues backed them. If she chairs Senate Banking, she could do what Senator Sherrod Brown did before him – just sit on bills. Not kill them outright. Just not move them.
Bennet has introduced legislation specifically aimed at restricting crypto activities among government officials. That is not a neutral posture.
The Clarity Act is already in trouble in the Senate regardless of who runs what. Waters' opposition in the House makes its path narrower. Industry sources think September is basically the last real window. If the bill does not move then, a Democratic majority in the next session probably buries it.
Waters' history with crypto is more complicated than a simple “no.” She came close on a stablecoin bill back in 2022. Close. It did not cross the line, she was engaged. Her opposition to the Clarity Act is not opposition to crypto regulation broadly. It is opposition to what she sees as weak regulation. That difference matters, even if the industry does not always want to hear it.
Still, “close” in 2022 did not produce a law. The political environment has shifted since then, with Trump's administration leaning hard into crypto. That has made Democratic scrutiny sharper. Democrats have spent considerable energy examining Trump's personal crypto ties, and that dynamic is not going away.
Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone is pushing back on the doom framing. His line is that crypto is non-partisan and that his organization will keep working across the aisle no matter who holds the gavels. That is the right thing to say publicly. Whether it is achievable in practice is a separate question.
The industry has done real bipartisan work before. Working with individual sympathetic Democrats is different from navigating four committee chairs who have each earned an F from your main advocacy group. Those are not people you lobby with a few talking points about blockchain innovation.
What the industry probably needs is a version of crypto regulation that Warren or Waters could actually stomach – something with real consumer protections, real anti-corruption provisions, real teeth. That is a harder bill to write than the Clarity Act. It might also be the only bill that moves in a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Klobuchar's potential exit from the Senate Agriculture Committee is worth watching. Bennet stepping into that role would shift the committee's posture on digital assets in a measurable way. No details yet on timing, and it is not confirmed. The possibility alone is already being factored in by crypto lobbyists mapping out their next moves.
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