Trump kills DeFi broker rule in major crypto win: Finance Redefined, April 4–11

In a significant win for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, US President Donald Trump overturned the Internal Revenue Service's DeFi broker rule

US President Donald Trump has overturned the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) “DeFi broker rule,” which would have expanded existing reporting requirements to include decentralized finance platforms.

Trump signed a joint congressional resolution on April 10 killing the measure, which was part of the Biden administration-era Build Back Better agenda.

The measure, which is officially titled “A Resolution Relative to a Rule Issued by the Internal Revenue Service Concerning Reporting of Digital Assets by Brokers,” would have required DeFi protocols to report transactions to the IRS.

It would have expanded the tax authority’s existing reporting requirements, which currently apply to brokerage institutions, to include DeFi platforms. In practice, this would have required DeFi protocols to disclose gross proceeds from crypto sales, including information regarding taxpayers.

The measure still faces a potential veto from Biden, although it’s unclear whether the president would intervene to block the resolution.

The House of Representatives voted to approve the bill on April 5, while the Senate passed the measure on April 4.

Representative Mike Carey, who chairs the House Financial Service's Tax, Impact and Inclusion Subcommittee and backed the bill, said in a statement that the new law is a "huge win for innovators, taxpayers and enforces common sense.”

“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.”

The measure is the first crypto bill to be enacted by the US Congress. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed two separate bills that would regulate stablecoins and place the Office of Science and Technology Integration within the Treasury Department. However, neither bill was voted on by the Senate before Congress recessed in March for the Easter holidays.

The move comes as big tech giants are increasingly entering the Web3 space, requiring existing crypto projects to focus more on collaborative tokenomics and market structure to survive, according to Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.

Speaking at Paris Blockchain Week 2025, Hoskinson said one of the main criticisms of the crypto and DeFi space is its “circular economy,” which often means that the rally of a specific cryptocurrency is being used as a fund to siphon money out of another token, ultimately limiting the growth of the whole industry.

However, Hoskinson stated that to have a chance against the centralized technology giants joining the Web3 industry, cryptocurrency projects will need more collaborative tokenomics and market structure.

“The problem right now, with the way we’ve done things in the cryptocurrency space, is the tokenomics and the market structure are intrinsically adversarial. It’s sum 0,” said Hoskinson. “Instead of picking a fight, what you have to do is you have to find tokenomics and market structure that allows you to be in a cooperative equilibrium.”

He argued that the current environment often sees one crypto project’s growth come at the expense of another rather than contributing to the sector’s overall health.

But Hoskinson added that this is not sustainable in the face of trillion-dollar firms like Apple, Google and Microsoft, which may soon join the Web3 industry amid clearer US regulations.

“We’re going to need to cooperate more to survive. It’s going to be dog-eat-dog out there.”