Patrick McHenry Doubts an Anti-Crypto Bill Can Pass the Incoming Democratic House

Patrick McHenry, former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, doubts the Democratic House that takes over in January can pass anti-crypto legislation.
Asked by co-host Austin Campbell about Sen. Elizabeth Warren‘s renewed push against crypto, McHenry said on Unchained’s Bits + Bips on Nov. 9 he did not think it possible to “pass an anti-crypto bill through the House.”
Democrats won both chambers in the Nov. 3 midterms, taking at least 54 Senate seats, with races in Mississippi and Alaska still uncalled. Warren is expected to chair the Senate Banking Committee in January.
McHenry said the incoming Congress is more “pro-crypto than the Congress from six years ago and eight years ago,” in both parties. “So we have to lock in the political power that we have and make sure that we remain popular for these politicians to not go after us,” he said.

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Regulators Still Need Congress
McHenry called repeal of the GENIUS Act stablecoin law unlikely. The wider market is less settled, he said, since Congress has not passed the Clarity Act on crypto trading rules, which Paradigm’s Justin Slaughter said on Nov. 5 looks dead.
McHenry said Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig lacks authority over spot markets, where crypto tokens themselves are bought and sold. McHenry called that authority necessary to police the crypto market and said it “needs to be given to him legislatively.” Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins, he said, “can go very far” on how crypto trades.
If a future president who isn’t explicitly pro-crypto replaced those regulators in a bid to “go back to a Gensler era” under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the check would be whether there are enough pro-crypto members of Congress to push back, he said.
Rate Caps Have the Votes, He Says
Asked by co-host Ram Ahluwalia about capping credit card interest, McHenry said he thinks there are “the votes in the House and in the Senate to pass” some version of a cap and of the Credit Card Competition Act. He named Warren, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance as backing both.
In January 2026, Trump said credit card interest should be held to 10% for a year, and later backed the competition bill. Under it, banks with over $100 billion in assets would have to give merchants a choice of two unaffiliated card networks, one of which can’t be Visa or Mastercard. Stablecoins are now where competition in payments is coming from, McHenry said.
He said the progressive politics Warren has honed in the party “doesn’t have the same power and import” in the coming Congress that it had when Joe Biden took office with a Democratic House and Senate. Some progressive policies still carry weight, he said, “but not anti-crypto policies having that power.”
Related Listen: DEX in the City: How Crypto Exchanges May Be Holding Up the Market Structure Bill

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