In Washington, an industry becomes real when it learns how to show up in a hearing room. Crypto learned this later than banking, telecom or oil. The technology was designed to route around central authorities; public policy is designed around finding the person authorized to speak. Blockchain Association lives inside that contradiction. It gives decentralized networks, venture funds, exchanges, miners and software developers something they do not naturally possess: a common front door.
The organization was launched in September 2018 by five founding companies - Coinbase, Circle, Protocol Labs, Digital Currency Group and Polychain Capital. Their timing was revealing. The initial-coin-offering boom had made digital assets impossible for federal agencies to ignore, but basic questions remained unsettled. Was a token a security, a commodity, property or something else? Who counted as a broker? Could a software developer be treated like a financial intermediary? An individual company could lobby on its own answer. A trade association could argue that the category itself deserved coherent rules.
The product is agreement
Blockchain Association now says it represents more than 100 organizations. Its member list runs across the sector: protocols and layer-one networks, exchanges, custody and infrastructure businesses, miners, decentralized-finance projects, real-world-asset companies, investment firms and foundations. These are customers in the trade-association sense. They contribute dues and support, then use the organization for representation, information and access.
The valuable work happens before a public letter appears. Members join issue-specific working groups, professional committees and workstreams. They compare how a proposed rule would affect very different businesses, negotiate language and decide which disagreements can be parked. The result might be testimony, a regulator comment, an amicus brief, a tax-principles paper or a coalition letter. In a sector famous for online arguments, consensus is the scarce product.
Membership is intentionally selective. Applicants generally need a U.S. presence, a demonstrated record of material regulatory compliance and a technical team advancing decentralized web technology. Law firms, consultancies, accounting firms, government entities and companies focused mainly on permissioned enterprise chains are generally outside the lane. The broad name masks a specific constituency: businesses and projects with a direct stake in permissionless crypto networks.
“As a member, you don’t just track policy - you help shape it.”Blockchain Association membership proposition
Three fronts, one feedback loop
The association operates across Congress, regulatory agencies and courts. On Capitol Hill, staff educate offices, arrange testimony and conduct fly-ins. In February 2026, members met with two dozen House Ways and Means offices while releasing a consensus framework for digital-asset taxation. The principles addressed practical frictions such as the timing of income on mining and staking rewards, non-custodial reporting, privacy and the treatment of cross-border activity.
At agencies, the work shifts from political coalition to technical record. Comment letters explain how a definition drafted for traditional intermediaries could land on a protocol, validator or wallet developer. In court, amicus briefs provide judges with industry context, while affirmative litigation contests rules the association believes exceed statutory authority. These channels feed one another: members supply operating facts, lawyers translate them into doctrine, policy staff carry the implications back to lawmakers, and communications staff turn the dispute into language a wider audience can follow.
The clearest proof of the legal strategy came from the SEC’s expanded dealer rule. Blockchain Association and the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas sued in 2024, arguing that the rule stretched the statutory meaning of “dealer” and created serious uncertainty for digital-asset market participants. A federal judge vacated the rule. In February 2025, the SEC dismissed its appeal, making the victory complete. For a member evaluating dues, a rule removed from the books is unusually concrete value.
A business model built on common exposure
Blockchain Association is a tax-exempt 501(c)(6) business league, not a venture-backed software startup and not a charitable 501(c)(3). Its economics look like those of a member institution. The latest publicly available filing, for fiscal 2024, reported $7.13 million in revenue and $8.34 million in expenses. About $6.54 million - 91.7 percent of revenue - was recorded as contributions. Program services, investment income and rental income made up the balance.
91.7% classified as contributions
Filed Form 990
What do members buy? Representation when their executives cannot spend a week walking congressional corridors. Early intelligence on legislation and enforcement. Hearing summaries for internal teams. A voice in shared policy language. Introductions to reporters and policymakers. Legal arguments whose benefits may spread across an entire technical category. And entry to the annual Policy Summit, a members-only gathering where lawmakers, SEC and CFTC officials, state regulators, law enforcement and industry executives speak in the same program.
The model also has a built-in tension. A trade association is strongest when it speaks for many members, but its positions can only be as sharp as that membership allows. Exchanges, protocol developers, investors and miners do not always want the same thing. Larger firms can afford their own Washington teams; smaller companies may depend more heavily on the collective. Blockchain Association has to remain broad enough to matter and specific enough to say something.
The market for speaking for crypto
Blockchain Association is not alone. The Digital Chamber is another national trade group. Crypto Council for Innovation overlaps on global and federal advocacy. Coin Center produces independent research and policy arguments without functioning as a company membership association. DeFi Education Fund concentrates on decentralized-finance policy and litigation. Major exchanges and investors also maintain their own government-affairs operations.
The distinction is portfolio and method. Blockchain Association combines a large company-and-project membership with a substantial legal practice, direct federal advocacy, technical working groups, communications and convening power. It can be a coalition leader one week and a coalition member the next. In 2026 it joined the Crypto Council for Innovation and The Digital Chamber on market-structure and tax letters. Cooperation is part of the competitive landscape because policymakers notice alignment across organizations.
The practical benefit: a startup can contribute its technical knowledge without building a full Washington office. A mature company can test its position against peers before taking it public. Both gain cover from an argument framed as an industry concern rather than a single balance-sheet preference.
The Mersinger era
Summer Mersinger became chief executive in June 2025 after serving as a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Her résumé spans the regulator, Capitol Hill and the private sector, including senior work for Senator John Thune. That experience suits an organization whose daily task is institutional translation: what a protocol does, what a statute says, what an agency can enforce and what a coalition can politically sustain.
The policy environment moved quickly after her arrival. Congress passed the GENIUS Act governing payment stablecoins in July 2025. The association supported the law and later organized against attempts it believed would weaken the framework. In 2026 it published tax principles, started a tokenization workstream and pushed for a federal market-structure bill. Mersinger also testified that tokenization should be understood as capital-market infrastructure, not as a loophole around securities rules.
In June 2026, the association released a letter from 160 former national-security, intelligence and law-enforcement professionals urging Senate action on market structure. The choice of messengers was the strategy: crypto regulation was presented not only as an innovation issue but as a way to establish compliance standards and tools against illicit finance. By July, Blockchain Association was pressing with two peer trade groups for Senate floor consideration of the CLARITY Act.
Where it fits
Blockchain Association sits between a lobbying firm, a policy institute, a legal coalition and an industry club, without being identical to any of them. Its expertise is less about forecasting token prices than understanding how definitions move through statutes, regulations and case law. Its customers use it to reduce policy uncertainty, share the cost of legal and government-relations work, and make technical consequences visible before a rule becomes difficult to reverse.
The measure of success is therefore indirect. A bill advances with language members can operate under. A court distinguishes software from custody. A regulator narrows a definition. A congressional office calls before drafting. None of this has the clean dashboard of a SaaS company. The outputs are relationships, language and precedent - institutional assets that compound quietly until the day a single word in a rule becomes worth millions.
There is a playful irony in the arrangement. An industry founded on removing trusted intermediaries now pays for one in Washington. But public policy is a network too, with its own nodes, validators and consensus failures. Blockchain Association’s job is to help crypto participate in that older system without requiring every builder to learn its entire protocol from scratch.