Ohio has a long history of producing people who attempt what others insist cannot be done. When two bicycle mechanics from Dayton argued that human flight was possible, the response was fear — warnings about danger, disorder, and defying nature. When an Ohio inventor promoted electric light, critics predicted fires, chaos, and threats to public safety. History settled the argument anyway. Flight shrank the world, electricity powered modern life, and the warnings that once dominated debate now read like footnotes.
The lesson is simple: caution matters, but fear disguised as prudence can quietly stop progress.
But America’s tradition of innovation is not limited to factories or the physical world. The same instinct that once powered flight and electrification is now driving a new wave of digital innovation through blockchain and decentralized finance. These technologies have the potential to give working families and small businesses greater control over their finances—moving money faster, at lower cost, and with stronger security—if fear, regulation and regulators do not succeed in stalling progress before the benefits are realized.
Yet Washington is still trying to regulate this technology using laws written in the 1930s, and that’s holding America back. China, the European Union, and Singapore are already adapting to this new reality and America faces a choice: lead the world in building the next generation of the internet or let other nations set the standards and write the rules while we argue about definitions.
The choice should be clear, but under former Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown, Congress blocked the innovators trying to build America’s future. For years, Brown had the power to lead but chose to obstruct. He refused to bring forward meaningful legislation, ignored bipartisan proposals, and treated blockchain entrepreneurs like criminals instead of innovators. While other nations rolled out the red carpet for digital-asset companies, Brown rolled out red tape. That’s not leadership, it’s negligence. And it cost Ohio and America jobs, investment, and our technological edge.
Fortunately, Ohio rejected Brown, and the new Republican leadership on the Banking Committee understands what Brown never did. Digital asset technology represents the next wave of economic opportunity for working families. Blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi) means faster paychecks, lower costs, and fairer access to credit. They mean small-business owners can raise money without going through Wall Street and they allow small businesses to send payments in seconds instead of days. They allow a single mom to send money across town, or across the world, in seconds without losing a day’s wages in fees. They cut out the middlemen who take a bite out of every paycheck and help families keep more of what they earn. They can protect American manufacturers from counterfeit products, reduce fraud, secure digital identities, and give creators real ownership of their work online. They can even help farmers manage supply chains and bring transparency to global trade.
That’s the kind of innovation we should encourage, not suffocate.
In the Senate, I’m fighting for legislation that’s pro-innovation, pro-worker, and pro-consumer. It’s why I proudly supported the GENIUS Act, which created an on-ramp for digital entrepreneurs and recognized blockchain as a cornerstone of the next economy. It was one of the few moments when Congress caught up to reality. We told the world that “innovation matters, and America intends to lead.”
But the job isn’t finished. We need comprehensive market-structure legislation that sets clear rules of the road for digital assets. Right now, entrepreneurs can’t even tell which regulator oversees them. Is their product a commodity, a security, or something else entirely? When the answer depends on which bureaucrat you ask, the system is broken. Capital that should be flowing to Dayton or Youngstown is going to Singapore and Switzerland. Innovators who would rather build their businesses in Ohio and the United States have told us they’re exploring options overseas because the rules here are so unclear. Smart, balanced legislation will give innovators the clarity they need to build here and consumers the protections they deserve.
The next generation of American builders isn’t in Washington. They’re in basements and start-up labs in the thriving big cities and prosperous small towns in Ohio — writing code, designing systems, and creating value from ideas. What they need from us isn’t another lecture. Its leadership.
With old, obstructionist politicians out of the way, it’s time for Congress to do its job: to pass market-structure legislation that provides clarity, stability, and vision for digital assets. We’ve done this before with electricity, aviation, and the internet. Each time, skeptics said it was too risky or too new. And each time, America proved them wrong.
Now we must do it again with blockchain. The choice is simple: lead or be left behind. We know that when America leads, the world follows. And it’s time for America to lead again.
Jon Husted is a United States Senator from Ohio.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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