Summary
- A newly introduced Senate bill keeps the House’s core framework, including the $10 network fee exemption, lending parity, and wash sale rules, but drops roughly half of H.R. 10357.
- Stablecoin relief in the Senate bill is narrower than in the House bill, covering purchases of goods and services but not sales for dollars. New staking provisions would ease participation by tax-exempt investors and publicly traded partnerships.
- CCI is prepared to continue working with Congressional leaders to advance a workable digital asset tax policy framework.
Today, Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, introduced the Aligning Digital Assets with Principles of Taxation (ADAPT) Act, a comprehensive digital asset tax framework. The bill arrived two weeks after the House Committee on Ways and Means advanced the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357), introduced by Chairman Jason Smith, on a bipartisan 38–5 vote. With legislation now in both chambers, a comprehensive digital asset tax policy framework has a real path forward.
What happened?
The Senate bill shares much of the House bill’s architecture: a $10 de minimis exemption for transaction fees, Section 1058 securities lending treatment for digital assets, elective mark-to-market for dealers and traders, a trading safe harbor, and wash sale and constructive sale rules.
It is, however, narrower, omitting provisions included in theHouse text, including elective annual mark-to-market accounting (new Section 1051), extending subpart F and PFIC rules, the Puerto Rico and possessions provisions, the voluntary disclosure program, and several broker reporting provisions. It also adds provisions with no House counterpart, mostly related to staking.
How do the bills differ?
- Stablecoins. The House bill effectively eliminates gain and loss on any sale or exchange of a qualified U.S. dollar stablecoin priced within 99.5–100.5 percent of redemption value. The Senate bill uses a 3 percent band around $1.00, and requires Treasury to maintain an updated list of qualified stablecoins. .
- De minimis fees. Both cap relief at $10. The Senate bill defines covered costs more broadly, including commissions and fees withheld from transfers, exempts those payments from the wash sale rule, and takes effect one year earlier, but excludes fees paid to move assets between a taxpayer’s own wallets.
- Staking. The Senate bill creates a passive staking category excluded from unrelated business taxable income (UBTI), adds staking rewards to qualifying income for publicly traded partnerships (PTPs), and defines staking rewards as units created by the protocol itself. The House treats validation income as ordinary income; the Senate is silent on character and expressly takes no position on timing. The House preserves trust status for any trust that stakes; the Senate limits this to exchange-traded, single-asset trusts meeting certain requirements.
- Wash sales. The House bill applies to dispositions after Sep. 14, 2026, with no grandfathering; the Senate bill would only apply to transactions after enactment, not any digital asset acquired before then.
- Mark-to-market. The Senate bill extends this election to any traded digital asset. The House bill starts from widely traded digital assets and adds specific categories, including qualifying pool tokens and high-volume tokens below the market-cap threshold.
What still needs to be addressed?
While both bills make real progress, there are key areas of digital asset taxation that remain unaddressed. To provide tax clarity for industry and regulatory agencies alike, it is critical to address these open topics. CCI advocates for the following:
- Staking and mining rewards. Neither bill changes when rewards are taxed, leaving taxation at receipt in place under current IRS guidance; the House also classifies them as ordinary income. CCI continues to urge Congress to treat rewards like other newly created property: credited at zero basis and taxed as capital gains only upon sale.
- De minimis scope. Both bills limit relief to fees in relation to network transactions. CCI supports a threshold that also covers everyday payments for goods and services and applies uniformly across all digital asset types, not stablecoins alone.
- Stablecoins. The Senate bill’s purchase-only exemption falls short of treating payment stablecoin use as a non-taxable event with a fixed $1 valuation. The House approach comes closer.
- Investment and tax-exempt structures. Each bill addresses part of the problem: the Senate’s UBTI and PTP provisions reflect CCI recommendations, while the House’s staking trust rule avoids the Senate’s eligibility limits.
What comes next?
H.R. 10357 awaits floor consideration in the House, and the Senate bill has been referred to the Finance Committee. Reconciling the two will determine whether the final framework delivers the clarity taxpayers, builders, and the IRS need. CCI will continue working with both chambers, on a bipartisan basis, to close these gaps and keep digital asset innovation in the United States.
Read our recent report on Staking Tax.
