Crypto Council for Innovation

The Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) announced its launch on April 6, 2021, convened by Paradigm. The founding members listed in the launch announcement included Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paradigm, and the payments company then named Square. The alliance set crypto asset policy outreach, public education, and industry collaboration as its areas of work.⁠[1]

At its launch, CCI said it would use research and cross-organization collaboration to explain crypto technology to policymakers and to develop industry views on responsible regulation. The announcement listed financial inclusion, privacy, and security as goals it hoped to achieve.⁠[1]

In a retrospective on her tenure published in February 2023, founding CEO Sheila Warren wrote that she had begun leading CCI the previous year, with early work including hiring staff, building out operations, and establishing a policy team. Her first hires included chief operating officer Annie Dizon, who was responsible for the personnel and administrative arrangements needed to run the organization.⁠[2]

In the retrospective, Warren described the 2022 Terra and FTXFTXFTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that operated FTX.com, moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021 and was valued at $32 billion in January 2022. In November 2022 it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection amid a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges. Its reorganization plan took effect in January 2025, after which the FTX Recovery Trust began paying creditors in stages.Open the full entry crises as the industry backdrop for the team’s work and emphasized responding to policy inquiries, providing verifiable information, and building trust. The article reflects management’s own assessment of the organization’s early work.⁠[2]

On September 15, 2022, Sheila Warren appeared on behalf of CCI at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and testified on S.4760, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA). CCI supported establishing a clearer regulatory framework for digital commodities while offering recommendations on consumer protection and technological development.⁠[3]

On decentralized finance, CCI argued for first studying the characteristics of DeFi before deciding how to bring it under the relevant rules, so as to avoid applying requirements designed for traditional intermediaries directly to a different technical structure. This was the association’s policy view on the draft bill.⁠[3]

On May 10, 2023, CCI filed an amicus curiae brief in In re Coinbase, Inc. (No. 23-1779) before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, supporting Coinbase’s petition for a writ of mandamus requiring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to its rulemaking petition. In the filing, CCI criticized the regulator for failing to provide a sufficiently clear compliance path and argued that this uncertainty would affect industry participation and investment.⁠[4]

The brief disclosed that Coinbase was then a CCI member, and stated that neither Coinbase nor its counsel authored the brief or provided funding specifically for it. CCI expressed the industry’s position here as amicus curiae, not as a petitioner in the case.⁠[4]

On October 30, 2024, the Proof of Stake Alliance (POSA) announced that it had become a program of CCI, continuing under the leadership of Alison Mangiero and focusing on staking-related policy discussions. Participating organizations listed in the announcement included Figment, Polychain CapitalPolychain CapitalPolychain Capital is a digital asset investment firm founded in 2016 by Olaf Carlson-Wee and headquartered in San Francisco. Its business covers actively managed blockchain asset portfolios and investments in related companies, with public investments spanning base networks, cryptography, on-chain finance, payments, data and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, Ava Labs, Blockdaemon, Eigen Labs, Electric CapitalElectric CapitalElectric Capital has been investing since 2018, focusing on technologies such as artificial intelligence, cryptography, and distributed systems. Its website lists pre-seed through Series A as its focus investment stages and describes the engineering, product, and operating support it offers founding teams.Open the full entry, Lido, Kiln, and Paradigm.⁠[5]

POSA lists long-term network development, the technical-service nature of staking, and consumer protection as its advocacy principles, and argues for distinguishing staking technical services from financial products. Its characterization of these services is a policy position. POSA itself was founded in 2019, earlier than CCI; the two have different founding dates.⁠[5]

On the same day, CCI announced a research collaboration with the Decentralization Research Center and a partnership with the Japan Cryptoasset Business Association (JCBA) to advance digital asset policy dialogue in Japan and Asia. These arrangements concern research and policy collaboration.⁠[6]

CCI also announced closer collaboration with Global Digital Finance (GDF), focused on UK digital asset policy and industry standards; Yele Bademosi joined as Africa Advisor to help expand its local network. The announcements did not describe these partnerships as mergers of organizations.⁠[6]

On December 13, 2024, CCI announced that Sheila Warren would step down as its founding CEO on January 6, 2025, and continue as senior global policy advisor. The board appointed Ji Hun Kim, previously chief legal and policy officer, as president and acting CEO.⁠[7]

On July 24, 2025, CCI announced that its board had formally appointed Ji Hun Kim as chief executive officer; the announcement confirmed that he had served as president and acting CEO since January of that year. Board chair Avichal Garg announced the appointment on behalf of the board.⁠[8]

The same announcement said that SoFi had joined and listed members added over the previous six months, including PayPalPayPalPayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) is an American digital payments company that operates payment brands including PayPal, Venmo, Braintree, and Xoom, providing online and in-store payments, money transfers, and consumer credit to consumers and merchants worldwide.Open the full entry, Bitpanda, MoonPayMoonPayMoonPay is a financial technology company providing fiat and digital-asset conversion, payments and related infrastructure for individuals and businesses. Its products have expanded from embedded cryptocurrency purchasing into merchant payments, stablecoins and institutional digital-asset services.Open the full entry, KrakenKrakenKraken is a digital-asset trading platform founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and Thanh Luu and launched for trading in 2013. As Payward’s flagship brand, it has expanded into spot and derivatives trading, equities, tokenized assets, custody and payments through jurisdiction-specific entities.Open the full entry, Galaxy, and Paxos. The announcement separately listed Jito Labs, Marinade, Alluvial, Consensys, and Babylon as having joined the POSA program; these program members were listed separately from CCI’s direct members.⁠[8]

On August 21, 2026, the Blockchain Association and the Crypto Council for Innovation jointly filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Sangamon County, Illinois, challenging the state’s Digital Asset Tax Act and asking the court for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. The two associations argue that the tax violates the Internet Tax Freedom Act and related requirements of the federal and state constitutions; these are the legal grounds asserted by the plaintiffs.⁠[9][10]

On September 9, 2026, the two associations announced that they had moved for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit, seeking to have the court block the state from enforcing the digital asset tax before it takes effect on January 1, 2027. The associations said that members were incurring compliance costs to deal with unclear rules and penalty risks and faced irreparable harm. The announcement records the motion and its grounds, not a court ruling granting an injunction.⁠[11]

On September 15, 2026, the Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation, and The Digital Chamber issued a joint statement urging the U.S. Senate to vote to advance consideration of the Clarity Act. The three associations cited consumer protection, market oversight, public safety, and predictable rules for businesses as reasons for their support. This is legislative advocacy by industry organizations; the statement itself does not mean the Senate has passed the bill.⁠[12]

CCI is a nonprofit global digital asset industry alliance headquartered in Washington, D.C. Its 2026 joint complaint describes its membership as including digital asset trading platforms, brokers, banks, stablecoin issuers, custodians, payment service providers, and investors, with work spanning U.S. federal, state, and international policy.⁠[10]

As of the website as viewed in September 2026, Ji Hun Kim was chief executive officer, Annie Dizon chief operating officer, and Alison Mangiero chief strategy officer and head of U.S. policy. The website also listed European, UK, and U.S. federal and state policy positions; Sheila Warren was listed on the advisory team as senior global policy advisor.⁠[13]

The website’s membership page displays direct members, POSA alliance members, and international partners separately. Member services include policy briefings, expert consultation, roundtables, and meetings with policymakers; working groups cover tax, securities, DeFi, countering illicit finance, and policy issues in different jurisdictions.⁠[14]

CCI’s official website is cryptoforinnovation.org, which publishes organizational announcements, comment letters, hearing testimony, policy briefs, and research materials so that members and the public can understand its policy positions.⁠[13]