Three weeks after Donald Trump’s reelection victory sent cryptocurrencies on a bull run, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., spotted an opportunity.

Collins started buying thousands of dollars’ worth of a meme coin called Ski Mask Dog. His legally mandated disclosure of those purchases helped drive the coin’s price up more than 100 percent.

The purchases once again raised the question of whether members of Congress should trade assets that might fall under their oversight. It also highlighted just how rare it is for members of Congress to buy or sell crypto — despite the growing, bipartisan enthusiasm for unleashing it on Americans.

Only four members of Congress, including Collins, reported buying or selling cryptocurrencies over the past two years, according to a review of trading information compiled by data provider 2iQ. All four were members of the House: two Democrats and two Republicans.

The lack of trading activity suggests that the ranks of lawmakers holding crypto has not changed much since December 2021, when a Wall Street Journal review found that only 11 members of Congress were invested in it.

Members of Congress and industry observers pointed to a range of factors that could explain the reticence, from skittish financial advisers to conflict-of-interest concerns. One crypto skeptic, meanwhile, said he thought the lack of trading activity might simply be a case of “do as I say, not as I do.”

“If those numbers are accurate, and only a few members of Congress own it, it reflects where most Americans are,” said Mark Hays, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. “Most Americans don’t see a lot of utility and are worried about how speculative and risky crypto looks.”

Opinions on the Hill itself vary wildly for why members of Congress hold so little cryptocurrency — and whether they should. One enthusiastic senator told The Intercept that Congress was just too old to get what crypto was all about, and a more skeptical one said she was glad so few members created conflicts of interest by owning securities they are tasked with regulating.

“Crypto Capital”

The dearth of crypto trading on Capitol Hill is especially stark because the last Congress adopted crypto as one of its pet causes, and the new Congress seems even more eager to push crypto into the mainstream.

In May 2024, the House overwhelmingly passed the industry’s favorite piece of legislation. The bipartisan bill, called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, would transfer oversight of many digital assets from the Securities and Exchange Commission to a more lightly staffed regulator seen as friendlier to the industry, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The Senate never took the bill up, but the November election made clear that crypto would have many champions in both chambers of Congress.