Dan Spuller sits in his Washington, D.C. office wearing a crisp blue dress shirt and a weary, well-earned smile.

It’s the Monday after the most consequential week in U.S. crypto policy, when the House of Representatives passed the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts with strong bipartisan support and narrowly advanced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act. President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law on Friday, making it the first major U.S. federal crypto legislation in history.

“It’s not quite ‘mission accomplished,’” Spuller reflects. “But it felt like the culmination of years of work finally coming together. Even up to the 11th hour, this could’ve fallen apart like so many efforts before. But this time, the stars aligned.”

As Executive Vice President of Industry Affairs at the Blockchain Association, Spuller has spent years laying the foundation for this moment by coordinating strategy, uniting stakeholders, and methodically building trust in the Beltway. It’s a role that demanded relentless behind-the-scenes work, all aimed at helping crypto move from the margins of policy debate to the president’s desk.

“We spent the better part of a year and a half building coalitions for these bills,” he says. “We worked with everyone from law enforcement to progressive think tanks. We had to make it bipartisan. We had to make it make sense. And we did.”

The trust Spuller commands in Washington grew from years of unglamorous work and unwavering conviction. His journey began years earlier, shaped by a winding road from state to federal politics that ultimately prepared him for crypto’s defining fight.

“There was a time when we’d walk into congressional offices and get blank stares,” he says. “Bitcoin sounded like science fiction. But we kept showing up. That’s how trust is built.”

“There was a time when we’d walk into congressional offices and get blank stares. Bitcoin sounded like science fiction. But we kept showing up. That’s how trust is built.”
DAN SPULLER

Dan Spuller in Washington, D.C. Credit: Fitzroy Powell Jr.

Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Spuller recalls a childhood shaped by Catholic school, Buffalo Bills games, schoolyard fights, and the bonds of a tight-knit rust belt community — abruptly upended at age sixteen when his family relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina.

“It created resilience and durability,” Spuller says of the challenging move during his formative years. “I had to start from scratch in the middle of high school. That helped prepare me later when I left everything again to start over in Washington.”

He turned to wrestling at Cardinal Gibbons High School, where he was the 2000-01 NCISAA state champion. In 2004, he placed fourth nationally in his weight class at the NHSCA Wrestling National Open while competing with East Carolina University’s men’s club wrestling program.

That adaptability carried him through college at ECU, where political science and public administration became his compass. An early internship in Washington in 2006 through Georgetown University helped cement his political fascination.

But it was working on then-Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory’s gubernatorial campaign during the 2008 financial crisis that set the stage for Spuller’s eventual pivot into cryptocurrency. Starting as McCrory’s driver, he often shuttled a young Richard Hudson, then campaign manager and now Congressman and Chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

“I was just a fly on the wall… we were watching the macroeconomic explosion unfold in real-time.”
DAN SPULLER

“I was just a fly on the wall,” he recalls vividly. “He was on the phone all the time with the CEOs of Wachovia and Bank of America. We were watching the macroeconomic explosion unfold in real time. It was September 2008, and Lehman Brothers had just collapsed.”

It wasn’t until 2012, however, that Spuller discovered Bitcoin — an encounter that would prove to have profound implications for his career arc. “I was just tinkering around, exploring the dark web and the Tor network,” he says, “That’s when I first learned about just what Bitcoin was. Like so many people in the early days, I didn’t buy any for nefarious purposes, but I remember seeing it and thinking, ‘What is this stuff?'”

His curiosity turned to commitment as he joined early Bitcoin meetups in Raleigh, gatherings small enough to fit around a coffee shop table. “Surely, we thought, more people were thinking about this than us,” Spuller laughs, recounting how he and his friend Farouk Okcetin launched the first-ever Bitcoin conference in the Carolinas, aptly named Cryptolina, in 2014.

Dan Spuller and Farouk Okcetin at the Cryptolina 2015 conference. Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spuller

“We cold-called everyone,” he says, “Vitalik Buterin came when he was a 19 year-old writer for Bitcoin Magazine. Adam Draper came. The community was small enough then that if you built it, people came.”

The conference opened doors, positioning Spuller as a credible bridge-builder between a nascent crypto community and skeptical regulators. “I thought the space was too politically disconnected,” he recalls. “To move past the anarchistic perception, we had to start engaging regulators. There was pushback, but that’s where I thrived. I could bridge both sides — the cypherpunks and the policymakers.”

While working as a public information officer and speechwriter for the State Secretary of Commerce, and later an administrator for the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, Spuller pursued crypto advocacy as a passionate side project. His grassroots efforts bore fruit in 2016 when North Carolina became the first state to update its Money Transmitters Act to include virtual currencies. It was a landmark victory.

“I wasn’t even a registered lobbyist,” he says with pride. “But in many ways the work we did was more effective than what Coinbase had done.”

Dan Spuller at the Blockchain Association’s Policy Summit in 2023. Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spuller

Mr. Spuller Goes to Washington

It’s a political tale as old as time: a rising operative leaves home to chase impact in the nation’s capital. For Spuller, that meant trading Raleigh for Washington, D.C. in 2016, joining the Chamber of Digital Commerce and later the Blockchain Association. He didn’t take leaving North Carolina lightly, but he knew the future of crypto policy was being written at the federal level, and he wanted to be at the heart of it.

At the Chamber, Spuller became one of the earliest full-time crypto advocates in the nation’s capital. He helped grow membership from a small core to more than 200 organizations and laid the foundation for bipartisan conversations on digital assets before such dialogue was considered politically viable.

Despite relocating to D.C., Spuller stayed closely connected to his home state. In 2019, he helped launch the North Carolina Blockchain Initiative with then–Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest, co-chairing the state task force with Okcetin. The task force championed one of the nation’s first anti-CBDC bills, which was initially vetoed by Governor Roy Cooper but later overridden by the legislature and signed into law.

“We needed more safe privacy safeguards in place,” explains Spuller. “This was a preemptive way for the state to send a message to Washington and the Federal Reserve that they would be opposed to this.”

When the pandemic struck in 2020, the Chamber was forced to lay off most of its staff, including Spuller. “It was the first time I’d been a free agent in five years,” he says. “The world was upside down. Nobody knew what was next.”

“We need to keep this crypto-native. No banks, no Deloitte, no Microsoft… we don’t serve many masters.”
DAN SPULLER

But the setback led to his next chapter at the Blockchain Association, where he found a home better aligned with his belief in crypto-native leadership. Introduced to Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith, Spuller joined the organization that summer on a consulting basis before coming aboard formally that fall. It was a move that aligned with his growing conviction that crypto needed its own voice, not one diluted by legacy interests.

“I was the only person in the world at that point who had experience building a crypto trade association,” he says. “And I advised Kristin, we need to keep this crypto-native. No banks, no Deloitte, no Microsoft. Our industry needs to have political influence in our own voice, in our own muscle in this town.”

The Blockchain Association he helped build stuck to that vision. “We don’t serve many masters,” Spuller says proudly. “That’s given us strength and resolve.”

Dan Spuller and Representative Tim Moore (R-NC). Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spuller

Under his leadership, the organization scaled from just 10 members to more than 130, a coalition that includes blockchain protocols, miners, infrastructure providers, and developers. More importantly, it became a unified political force, pushing back hard on what Spuller describes as a hostile regulatory environment under SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

“He targeted companies… unilaterally,” Spuller says, imposing sweeping enforcement actions that, in his view, “cost America a lot of opportunity and development that went overseas.”

Spuller’s criticism of Gensler runs deeper than policy.

“Gary Gensler is a politician before he’s a regulator,” he reflects. “He wanted to be Treasury Secretary badly, and he would have been if Hillary had won in 2016… He wasn’t well-liked by others on the FSOC — even among fellow liberal intellectuals, because he’s an egotist, and he was very spiteful.”

“Gary Gensler is a politician before he’s a regulator… he’s an egotist, and he was very spiteful.”
DAN SPULLER

The collapse of crypto exchange FTX dealt an even deeper blow to the industry’s credibility. Though the Blockchain Association had rejected FTX’s membership application, the exchange’s downfall tainted the broader industry and froze momentum in Washington.

“It killed crypto legislation for a year,” Spuller says. “They spent a fortune on politicians. It was dirty money… and now he’s going to prison.”

Spuller had met Sam Bankman-Fried in 2021 at a political fundraiser. “He shows up with armed guards, full security detail… it was bizarre,” he recalls. “Seemed like a nice enough guy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something was off.” That sense only deepened at the lavish Crypto Bahamas event in 2022. “Even by crypto standards, it was excessive. I remember thinking, ‘Where is this guy getting all this liquidity?’”

The answer, of course, would become infamous. But Spuller is careful not to let scandal define the story. “We have way more good actors than bad,” he says. “The difference is, the good ones stayed and stepped up.”

Dan Spuller with Bo Hines, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets at the White House. Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spuller

Crypto’s Power Pivot

By 2023, the tide had turned. A wave of organizing, education, and strategic outreach began to bear fruit. Then came the real inflection point: Donald Trump’s full-throated embrace of crypto in 2024. His official campaign promoted NFT collections, while allies and adjacent entities — including World Liberty Financial — were linked to memecoins and other crypto ventures. The embrace galvanized Republican support but raised new ethical concerns.

“There’s a difference between supporting crypto and self-enrichment,” Spuller says. “I generally support President Trump’s broader agenda, but the gray area around some of these memecoins — and the family’s involvement — has been concerning. The stablecoin bill would have passed this spring, had it not been for some of these distractions like World Liberty Financial… It made things look way more partisan than they were.”

And partisanship is exactly what Spuller warns against. He’s proud of the bipartisan coalitions built to pass the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts. But he knows the work can be undone just as quickly if crypto becomes viewed as a single-party issue.

“If crypto is perceived as a conservative-only issue, we risk going the way of the NRA: officially nonpartisan, but effectively isolated. We can’t let that happen.”
DAN SPULLER

“If crypto is perceived as a conservative-only issue, we risk going the way of the NRA: officially nonpartisan, but effectively isolated. We can’t let that happen,” Spuller warns. “This has to be bipartisan.”

Spuller’s longstanding connections — including Bo Hines, Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets at the White House, whom he met in 2014 when the North Carolina native played in the first Bitcoin Bowl football game — have enabled him to deftly navigate the complexities of the Trump administration and beyond.

While Republicans have led much of the crypto policy progress, Spuller continues to engage with the other side of the aisle. For him, the opportunity is generational rather than ideological. “We’re seeing newer progressive Democrats that are running for office that are younger, that are digitally native,” Spuller says. “They’ve grown up with the internet. They understand the importance of this.”

As for what comes next? The passage of the GENIUS Act into law, along with the advancement of the CLARITY and Anti-CBDC Acts, marked a historic turning point — but for Spuller, it’s far from the finish line.

All eyes now turn to the CLARITY Act, a bill that would finally determine whether crypto assets fall under the SEC or CFTC, ending years of regulatory gray area that was exploited under Gensler’s enforcement-first approach. Many in the crypto policy world view CLARITY as more critical than GENIUS, and Spuller agrees.

“That is the biggest priority by far,” says Spuller. “That’ll also open up the floodgates to institutional support because a lot of the large financial players are hesitant to even deal with this until they know what we’re dealing with.”

Dan Spuller in Washington, D.C. Credit: Fitzroy Powell Jr.

The CLARITY Act now moves to the Senate, where it faces a tough fight. Though it passed out of committee with bipartisan support, it stalled amid controversy tied to Trump-aligned crypto activity. Still, Spuller believes momentum is on their side.

“I think August is the month,” he says. “The White House is 100% behind getting this done. The President’s ready to get it done. If we don’t pass, it’s gonna be a big blunder… I think it’s too important for them to ignore it. We can’t do it. We gotta get it done.”

Following passage, the next hurdle is implementation and rulemaking. Even once the CLARITY Act becomes law, agencies like the SEC and CFTC must craft and formalize regulations through a lengthy public process. That’s where Spuller sees his coalition playing a key role.

“The rules have to be done right,” he says. “They’re going to want industry feedback, and that’s where we come in. We represent the industry.”

After years of navigating fog and fending off attacks, the terrain is finally beginning to take shape. “For the past seven, eight years, we’ve been playing defense,” he says. “Now we’re playing offense — and winning.”

But the victory lap will have to wait. It’s this delicate balance between progress and permanence that keeps him showing up to work each day in Washington, remaining open-minded about his role in shaping what comes next. “The book’s not done,” he says, chuckling. “I don’t even think it’s halfway written.”