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Nov. 10, 2024 at 11:15 am ET

Bernie Moreno was celebrating Tuesday night at La Centre, a banquet center in the Cleveland suburbs, when he got a call from Brian Armstrong, Brad Garlinghouse and a handful of other crypto executives.

The Republican had just defeated three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown, the head of the Senate Banking Committee and one of the largest crypto critics on Capitol Hill. The executives wanted to congratulate Moreno.

The crypto industry emerged as one of the biggest spenders of the election cycle by donating $170 million to a trio of super PACs to elect friendly lawmakers such as Moreno, a former blockchain entrepreneur and car dealer running for election in Ohio.

The effort met with resounding success: 50 of the 58 general-election candidates the super PACs supported won their races, the AP projects. Eight contests were still too close to call as of Sunday evening.

The enthusiasm has been reflected in the market, too. Bitcoin prices surged to a record Sunday, hitting $80,000 for the first time, in a rally that seemed unfathomable in the midst of the 2022 market meltdown that culminated in the collapse of exchange FTX.

Now, the crypto world expects President-elect Donald Trump and the next Congress will deliver what it has long desired: rules that treat it differently from Wall Street.

Trump has vowed to ease the regulatory burden on crypto and create a reserve to hold the nation’s bitcoin supply. Congress will soon be full of lawmakers—young and old—who believe cryptocurrency is a unique asset class that shouldn’t be regulated like stocks and bonds.

Eric Trump, one of the president-elect’s sons, retweeted a meme after the election of a bitcoin flag flying over the White House, a post that captures the hope felt by many in the crypto world.

“We’ve turned a corner,” said Kristin Smith, chief executive of the Blockchain Association, an industry lobbying group. “Our worst days as an industry are behind us, and we are on a path to getting appropriate and lasting policy.”

Several industry executives touted Moreno’s victory on social media and celebrated their role.

Ohio Senator-elect Bernie Moreno, shown on election night, wants the crypto industry to thrive. Photo: Sue Ogrocki/Associated Press

“Being anti-crypto is simply bad politics,” Armstrong, chief executive of exchange Coinbase Global, said of Brown’s defeat on X.

“As a pro-innovation, pro-business candidate, I think [Moreno’s] going to be exactly the kind of person we need in the Senate,” said Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple Labs, who personally donated money to Moreno’s campaign.

Some of the biggest challenges that crypto executives have identified are preventing regulatory oversight from hampering their growth, gaining access to banking, and stabilizing dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies.

It helps that crypto’s biggest critics may soon be gone from Washington. Trump will replace its biggest nemesis: Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, who argues that crypto firms should have to follow his agency’s investor-protection rules.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler has tried to rein in big crypto firms. Photo: Justin T. Gellerson for The Wall Street Journal

The regulator sued the industry’s biggest exchanges—Coinbase, Binance and Kraken—last year, saying they should comply with rules that govern stock exchanges. The spate of litigation galvanized crypto supporters. Republican lawmakers oppose the way Gensler has used his enforcement division to try to rein in big crypto players.

“We are going to make certain that they know what the rules are and how to follow them so that the crypto industry can thrive here,” said Moreno, the incoming Ohio senator. “We have to make sure this technology grows and thrives in America.”

Meanwhile, Brown’s likely successor atop the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.), wants to draft a new regulatory framework for crypto that eases the requirements for firms engaging in trading and custody.

With Republicans set to take the Senate and retain control of the House, some legislation that previously stalled may stand a better chance of moving forward, even if it is rewritten by the chamber’s new power players.

In May, for example, the House overwhelmingly passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act. That bill would have given more responsibility for overseeing crypto to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller agency that is seen as more receptive to digital assets. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, didn’t advance the legislation.

Trading prices in a cryptocurrency exchange’s window on Wednesday. Photo: David Lombeida/Bloomberg News

“I believe the industry is hopeful that there could be some action taken on those bills during the lame duck,” said Rep. French Hill (R., Ark.). “I hope that’s the case but if it’s not, we’ll be ready to go, and it will be a top priority in the new Congress.”

Hill is chair of the digital assets subcommittee on the House Financial Services Committee and one of the sponsors of the FIT21 bill.

Congress also quashed earlier this year an SEC accounting policy known as SAB 121 that made it difficult for banks to safeguard digital assets. President Biden vetoed Congress’s move, and the SEC later softened the strict stance it took on the guidance.

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Even if the crypto industry scores some victories, issues on other fronts may be tougher to crack. The sector has long struggled with access to banking, sometimes using middlemen as solutions, due to banks’ unwillingness to take on clients whose business models revolve around volatile assets. The collapse of two crypto-friendly banks last year further diminished an already small subset of firms willing to bank crypto.

Finding banks to custody their crypto, rather than dollar deposits, has been even harder. And gaining access to the banking system would involve several regulators, including the Federal Reserve, whose leadership isn’t facing wholesale change in 2025.

Another bill died in the Senate Banking Committee in April that would have required stablecoins—a genre of cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies like the dollar—to be backed by reserves. Stablecoins are critical to the industry as a source of liquidity, allowing traders to buy digital currencies on exchanges where fiat currencies aren’t accepted.

A bitcoin-conference sign in July featured Donald Trump. Photo: Liam Kennedy/Bloomberg News

Write to Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com, Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com and Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Of the 58 general-election candidates supported by a trio of crypto super PACs, 50 won their races. The other eight contests were still too close to call as of Sunday evening. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 54 of the 58 general-election candidates won and three contests were too close to call. A chart depicting the number of elected House candidates backed by the super PACs has also been updated. (Corrected on Nov. 10)