President Trump Signs Resolution Erasing IRS Crypto Rule Targeting DeFi

With a signature from President Donald Trump, the decentralized financial (DeFi) corner of the crypto sector is now freed from U.S. Internal Revenue Service demands that such platforms be treated as brokers and required to track and report user activity.

That narrowly focused IRS rule, approved in the final days of former President Joe Biden's administration, has been formally struck down, according to Representative Mike Carey, an Ohio Republican who backed the effort. And the agency is prevented from pursuing anything like it, according to the Congressional Review Act power used by lawmakers to get rid of the tax regulation.

"The DeFi Broker Rule needlessly hindered American innovation, infringed on the privacy of everyday Americans, and was set to overwhelm the IRS with an overflow of new filings that it doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle during tax season," Carey said in a statement after the resolution was signed on Thursday.

Though the issue was relatively limited, its completion marks the first time a pro-crypto effort has cleared the U.S. Congress.

Both the Senate and House of Representatives agreed to reverse the IRS action with strong bipartisan showings, further underlining the crypto sector's strength in this Congress. That could bode well for the industry's chances with other more wide-ranging matters, including legislation to regulate stablecoin issuers and to set market rules for crypto transactions.

"With President Trump’s signature, the rule is officially disapproved and voided, and the United States has passed its first ever crypto legislation — a watershed moment for DeFi," the DeFi Education Fund noted in a Thursday posting to its site.

With the DeFi tax resolution in the rearview, the next crypto priority in Congress has been stablecoin legislation. Similar bills have passed relevant committees in both the House and Senate and are awaiting floor votes in each chamber. Approvals would start a process to meld the two efforts into one compromise version.

The president has called for a bill to arrive on his desk by August, and the lawmakers behind the legislation have said such a timeline is still possible.