Pillar 01 · Growth
Digital Assets & Blockchain
Whether Wisconsin lets you stake, custody, and build here — and whether the state builds a digital dollar of its own on the federal standard.
Where this stands
The Assembly answered the staking question. The Senate did not.
AB 892 would have settled that staking a digital asset is not a securities transaction. It cleared the Assembly and stalled in the Senate, and died when the 2025–26 session adjourned sine die. The question did not go away with it: a Legislative Council study committee is now chartered to answer that exact issue, which makes a 2027 bill close to certain.
Federal law is still unfinished behind it. The CLARITY Act passed the U.S. House in July 2025 and has not cleared the Senate, so whatever Wisconsin writes will stand on its own for some time.
What did pass: Wisconsin now regulates virtual currency kiosks, which is signed law. That is the pattern worth noticing — bills that add consumer guardrails move, bills that preempt incumbent finance stall.
Who is in the room
The committee writing the 2027 bill seated the skeptics.
The Study Committee on Cryptocurrency is chaired by Sen. Rob Stafsholt with Rep. Nate Gustafson as vice-chair. Of its six public members, three come from community banks or credit unions. None are digital-asset natives, and the preliminary agenda for its first meeting scheduled the UW Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic, DFI’s Division of Securities, the Wisconsin Credit Union League and the Wisconsin Bankers Association — with no digital-asset business on it.
Money has not closed that gap. On AB 471 and AB 892 combined, Coinbase logged more reported lobbying hours in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin Bankers Association did, and AB 892 died anyway. What the incumbents have is standing: Wisconsin members, Wisconsin employers, and a seat at the table before the bill exists.
Priority · 2027 session
A Wisconsin digital dollar, built to the federal standard
Congress settled the federal question on 18 July 2025, when the GENIUS Act became law as Public Law 119‑27 and set a national standard for payment stablecoins, including a pathway for state-qualified issuers below $10 billion. What it did not decide is what any given state builds on top of it.
Wisconsin already has the public purpose waiting for it. The Common School Fund, administered by the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands since 1848, holds a principal above $1.6 billion, distributed $73.5 million in 2026, and is the sole source of state funding for Wisconsin’s public school libraries. BCPL itself notes that the fund’s traditional revenue has eroded. Reserve income is a durable answer to that, which is why this is a schools argument before it is a technology argument.
Our central ask for 2027 is a state framework that keeps the opportunity here: reserves held to the federal standard, reserve income directed to public priorities, and a licensing path clear enough that the institutions capable of stewarding it can say yes.
Positions we have already taken
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Supported
Staking Clarity Act
That staking is not, by itself, a securities transaction — the question now before the interim committee.
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Supported
Crypto Clarity and Innovation Act
Workable definitions and a licensing path for digital-asset businesses operating in Wisconsin.
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Supported
The WIN Bill
An Office of Financial Technology Innovation, giving the state somewhere to put this expertise permanently.
Bill numbers, votes and committee composition are drawn from the Wisconsin Legislature and Legislative Council records; lobbying registrations from Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. See the legislative tracker for live bill status, or the full agenda for how this fits the two pillars.