Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETHDenver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins face scrutiny, players like Stripe re-enter the conversation, and startups either find traction or flame out. The hype cycle is over, or at least taking a break. So what comes next? 

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Jacquelyn Melinek, CEO of Token Relations and host of the Talking Tokens and Crypto in America podcasts, to make sense of how the market has changed and what in the world of crypto is built to last. 

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA is reportedly in dire shape, according to bipartisan lawmakers and industry leaders who fear that the agency’s ability to perform its core mission has been diminished and left it unprepared for a cybersecurity crisis.

News site Cyberscoop’s Tim Starks spoke with sources across Congress, the private cyber industry, and beyond, and what came back reflected a general consensus that CISA has suffered under cuts and layoffs during the Trump administration’s first year.

Over that time, CISA has lost around one-third of its staff, which cost it programs, personnel, and expertise, including the agency’s counter-ransomware initiative and efforts to promote secure software development. Some of these have included several members of its election security team, TechCrunch reported last year. CISA is the federal agency responsible for election security. Some warned that Trump’s ongoing obsession with promoting false claims about the 2020 election has led to the administration deprioritizing CISA.

CISA also reassigned hundreds of other staffers to aid other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security as part of the Trump administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

Many of Cyberscoop’s sources blame the Trump administration, Congress, or both. Others singled out CISA’s acting director, Madhu Gottumukkala, as having struggled to lead the agency and reportedly caused security headaches as a result.

CISA has been without a permanent director since Trump entered office in 2025.

The cybersecurity agency is said to be currently operating at around 38% staff levels as the partial U.S. federal government shutdown, which began on February 14, drags on. Lawmakers have declined to continue funding federal immigration authorities amid widespread criticism following the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.

When reached for comment, CISA’s Gottumukkala told TechCrunch that the agency “remains unwavering in its commitment to protect our federal networks from malicious cyber threat actors despite the multi-week government shutdown” of Homeland Security. 

The proliferation of AI data centers plugging into the national electrical grid has helped increase consumer electricity prices, driving up the average national electricity price by more than 6% in the last year.

That’s not a good look for the incumbents ahead of this fall’s elections, and President Donald Trump addressed the challenge in his State of the Union speech last night.

“We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs,” Trump said. “They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up.”

The hyperscalers in question don’t need to be told. They have already made public commitments in recent weeks to cover electricity costs by building their own power sources, paying higher rates, or both, part of a broader effort to solve PR problems around data center expansion and win over skeptical communities.

On January 11, Microsoft announced its policy “to ensure that the electricity cost of serving our datacenters is not passed on to residential customers.” On January 26, OpenAI committed to “paying its own way on energy, so that our operations don’t increase your energy prices.” On February 11, Anthropic made the same pledge to “cover electricity price increases that consumers face from our data centers.” Yesterday, Google announced the largest battery project in the world to support a data center in Minnesota.

What these commitments mean in practice, and who will determine which data centers are responsible for which price increases, remains unknown. The White House has not released the text of the proposed pledge.

“A handshake agreement with Big Tech over data center costs isn’t good enough,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly said on social media. “Americans need a guarantee that energy prices won’t soar and communities have a say.”

White House spokesperson Taylor Rodgers said that next week, companies will send representatives to formally sign the pledge at the White House. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are reportedly among those set to attend. However, none of the companies have confirmed their attendance.

Even if tech companies commit to taking on electricity costs, on-site power plants may not be a panacea — they can still have adverse impacts on the surrounding environment, and will stress supply chains for natural gas, turbines, photovoltaics, and batteries, depending on how companies aim to power their compute.