Blockchain Association sees leadership shift shortly after crypto Clarity Act fizzles

Blockchain Association sees leadership shift shortly after crypto Clarity Act fizzles

The trade group will be run again by its original CEO, Kristin Smith, when Summer Mersinger leaves at the end of a long congressional tussle.

The Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger is stepping down and will be replaced on an interim basis by the group's former longtime leader, Kristin Smith. The transition, which was announced just days after the industry experienced a legislative disappointment in the rejection of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, is set for next month.

Summer Mersinger is leaving the helm of the Blockchain Association, one of the crypto industry's leading advocacy groups, a week after the sector weathered a major legislative setback in the loss of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

Mersinger will be replaced — for now — by Kristin Smith, the organization's original CEO who ran the association from its launch in 2018 until 15 months ago, according to a Friday statement. The handover is set for October 16, closing a tumultuous era that saw major crypto wins in Washington and a significant defeat last week, when the U.S. Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act in a wide loss in which all the Senate's Democrats and some Republicans declined to support it.

"I'm proud of how far we've come together, from the GENIUS Act to real regulatory clarity at the SEC and CFTC," said Mersinger, who'd taken the job after leaving her post as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in a statement. "Kristin built this association from the ground up, and BA is in good hands. I'll be cheering them on.”

Smith, who is stepping into the CEO post on an interim basis, had left the Blockchain Association last year to take a role as president of the new group, the Solana Policy Institute, but she retained the BA board presidency. She'll keep her SPI job, a BA spokesman said.

She noted that Mersinger had led the organization through the "most consequential moment in the history of crypto policy," having arrived shortly before the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS) Act became the first major U.S. crypto law, and running it during unprecedented crypto activity at the Securities and Exchange Commission and her former employer, the CFTC.

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