The Wall Street Blockchain Alliance: a small trade association with a long paper trail — what the public record shows

If you follow the US debate on how digital assets should be regulated, you will sooner or later come across a letter signed "Wall Street Blockchain Alliance". It turns up in the SEC's Crypto Task Force meeting log, in the comment files of the FDIC and the OCC, in the US Senate Banking Committee's request-for-information record and, since February this year, in a consultation at the Bank of England. The name suggests something large. The public record shows something more interesting: a deliberately small organisation whose reach comes from its members and its working groups rather than from headcount or budget. This article sets out what that record says — no more, no less. Every figure below is read from the source cited beside it.

The Wall Street Blockchain Alliance — WSBA for short — is a US non-profit trade association. Its legal name is Wall Street Blockchain Alliance Inc, incorporated in New Jersey with the registered address 11 Westgate Ct, Colts Neck, NJ, and it is recognised by the US Internal Revenue Service under section 501(c)(6) of the tax code, the category reserved for "business leagues" such as chambers of commerce and industry associations. The IRS ruling year is 2016; the organisation's own website carries the copyright line "2015–2026", which is the founding year it gives itself.

Its stated mission, in its own words, is "to advocate, guide and promote comprehensive adoption of blockchain technology and digital assets across global markets". The framing on its homepage is structural rather than promotional of any particular asset: blockchain, cryptoassets and smart contracts, it says, "represent a seismic shift in how financial markets, and all aspects of the global economy, operate", and an "organized, strategic approach will help all participants involved in the global, distributed ledger ecosystem".

Three things the WSBA is not, according to its own pages, are worth stating at the outset. It is not a regulator. It is not a certification body. And it does not deal in the assets it discusses: its disclaimer states that the organisation "does not solicit or offer funds in any form of digital or cryptoasset or cryptocurrency", and that nothing it publishes "constitutes accounting, investment, financial, legal or tax advice".

The team page names two people. Ron Quaranta is the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. His biography on the site describes "over three decades of experience in the global financial services and technology industries"; before the Alliance he was chief executive of DerivaTrust Technologies, a software company serving financial-market participants. He edited Blockchain in Financial Markets and Beyond: Challenges and Applications (Risk Books), contributed to the Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation annual series published by Global Legal Insights from 2019 to 2022, was lead author of the ISACA Blockchain Framework, and was named to Accounting Today's list of the 100 most influential people in accounting in 2018. Candace Barbieri is Head of Operations.

Around them sits a larger volunteer structure. The Executive Committee lists five members: Emmanuel Aidoo of Perella Weinberg, James Jalil, an adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School, Joshua Ashley Klayman of Linklaters, Allison Paz, co-founder and chief operating officer of Nicklpass, and Quaranta himself. An advisory board of ten adds practitioners from law firms, consultancies, a bank and academia — among them Dr Sean Stein Smith of Lehman College, Dina Ellis Rochkind of Paul Hastings, Sonia Goklani of ClearTrak and Habibe Rubio of Westpac Banking Corporation.

Because the WSBA is a registered non-profit, its annual returns are public. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, which republishes IRS data, shows the following for the last five fiscal years (US dollars, years ending December):

Across the nine years for which data is published, 2017 to 2025, expenses exceeded revenue in seven. This is not unusual for a member-funded association, but it does put the scale in perspective: the WSBA operates on roughly the budget of a small professional office.

The revenue comes from membership. Two categories are published. Individual membership costs USD 699 a year; a student membership costs USD 199. Corporate membership exists but its price is not published — companies apply by e-mail and, as the membership page puts it, "all applications for membership are subject to approval". The published list of member types is broad: accounting practices, banks, buy-side firms, consultancies, education providers, exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, law practices, regulators, sell-side firms, technology vendors and venture capital funds.

The WSBA's output is written commentary and convening, not products. Its activity page describes five formats: member-only working-group meetings; early-evening roundtables in New York City; "Innovation Spotlight" mini-conferences with vendor presentations; monthly webcasts, free for members; and an annual summit. The 2025 WSBA Crypto & Blockchain Summit took place on 23 October 2025 at the New York Marriott Marquis, with free admission; at the time of writing no 2026 date is published. A separate education day, "Blockchain for Wall Street", is described as "a day of practical education and peer-to-peer engagement".

The working groups are where the substantive work happens, and their list is a good map of what the organisation thinks matters. As of September 2026 there are seven:

• Accounting, chaired by Dr Sean Stein Smith, which works with the AICPA and CPA.com on what blockchain and cryptoassets mean for audit and accounting practice;
• Cryptoassets, chaired by David Brill, on "native assets such as Bitcoin" and their intersection with global financial markets;
• Enterprise Solutions and Technology & Product, both chaired by Sonia Goklani, on adoption across banking, supply chain, digital media and healthcare, with partners including the Accord Project, Hyperledger, IBM and R3;
• Legal, chaired by Joshua Ashley Klayman, on distributed ledgers and smart contracts;
• ESG / DEI, chaired by Habibe Rubio;
• and, since 28 May 2026, an AI & Quantum Working Group, co-chaired by Chrissy Hill of Dreadnought Solutions and Adele Hogan of Cohen & Gresser LLP.

That last group deserves a sentence of its own, because it is the first time the Alliance has formally extended its remit beyond blockchain. The launch release describes its scope as the impact of artificial intelligence on trading, compliance and market infrastructure, the impact of quantum computing on cryptographic infrastructure, post-quantum cryptography and AI governance. Quaranta's quoted comment was that "the intersection of blockchain, AI, and Quantum is one of the most important conversations happening in financial markets today".

The WSBA also publishes. Its most recent white paper, "Stablecoin Issuers and the Public Markets: Accounting and Tax Implications of Going Public and Shareholder Distributions", was written by Stein Smith and carries a 2026 copyright; earlier primers covered stablecoins and central bank digital currencies for accounting professionals. And it has a published op-ed policy for member contributions: 500 to 1,000 words, "thoroughly researched" with citations, with disclosure of any relationship to the individuals, firms or cryptoassets mentioned, and one firm rule — "The article cannot directly promote your firm or services."

This is the part of the record that gives the organisation its visibility. Since 2019 the WSBA has filed comment letters with, among others, the SEC, the IRS, FinCEN, the OCC, the FDIC, the FASB and two Senate committees. The letters are signed by named practitioners "on behalf of contributing members", usually alongside Quaranta as Chairman.

The recent filings show a clear shift in subject matter. The 2019 to 2023 letters are about definitions — whether a digital asset is a security, how it is taxed, how a broker should report it, how an auditor should account for it. The 2025 and 2026 letters are about implementation:

• 27 March 2025, SEC Crypto Task Force: a six-point agenda covering a classification framework, a compliance path for issuers, clarity for trading platforms, and predictability and transparency in enforcement.
• 5 August 2025, US Senate Banking Committee, in response to its request for information on digital-asset market structure: support for an "ancillary assets" framework with the CFTC overseeing spot crypto markets and the SEC overseeing digital securities; a legislative clarification of the Howey test; conditional safe harbours; codified authority for banks to custody, pay and lend in digital assets; and a federal licensing pathway.
• 10 February 2026, Bank of England, on its consultation on sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins: support for the revised 40/60 split between unremunerated central-bank deposits and UK gilts, opposition to holding limits as "technically unenforceable", support for direct access to the RTGS payment system for issuers, and a call for UK–US coordination.
• 19 February 2026, FDIC, on approval requirements for payment-stablecoin issuance by subsidiaries of insured banks under the GENIUS Act.
• 1 May 2026, OCC, on the GENIUS Act implementing rule: a narrower definition of "customer", technology-neutral definitions that cover permissioned chains and multi-party-computation custody, a clearer line between prohibited balance-based yield and permissible activity-based incentives, and monthly rather than weekly reporting.
• 13 May 2026, a meeting with the SEC Crypto Task Force, at which the WSBA delegation — Philip Berg of Otterbourg, David Brill of FTI Consulting, John Delalio of EisnerAmper, Joshua Ashley Klayman, Ron Quaranta and Joseph Ryan of CBIZ — discussed the state of crypto regulation, market structure, stablecoins and payments infrastructure, and registration pathways.

Four of the last five submissions concern stablecoin regimes. That is the organisation's centre of gravity in 2026, and the Bank of England letter is, so far, its only documented engagement with a European regulator.

The partners page lists seven organisations: the Accord Project, Banqu, R3, AICPA-CIMA, Spitzberg Partners, CPA.com and Hyperledger. In January 2025 the WSBA also joined the XBRL US community, and the two organisations issued a joint announcement on "efficiency and transparency in decentralized finance". Recent member announcements on the WSBA's own news page include Cohen & Co (28 July 2025); Block, Inc. (undated); and Vouched, an identity-verification company, on 25 August 2026. Other firms — CliftonLarsonAllen and Gould & Ratner among them — have announced their own membership.

One structural detail says a lot about how the organisation sees itself. The WSBA publishes a formal antitrust policy that prohibits members from discussing prices, pricing methods, margins, cost data or discounts, from allocating markets, and from agreeing on terms of employment. That is the standard posture of a trade association whose members compete with one another, and it is the reason the Alliance's output is about frameworks and rules rather than about any member's business.

A documentary profile is only as honest as its list of gaps, so here is ours. The record does not tell you what corporate membership costs, because the price is not published. It does not tell you how many members the WSBA has; no figure appears on its site, and its LinkedIn page is closed to automated reading. It does not tell you whether the Alliance has a position on the European Union's MiCA regulation — we found no submission, paper or statement on it, which is a gap in the record, not evidence of a view. It does not tell you whether a 2026 summit will take place; none is announced. And it does not tell you what a "tokenization working group", mentioned in one member's 2025 press release, actually is, since no such group is listed on the working-groups page.

We read regulatory comment letters for the same reason we read court filings and company reports: they are primary documents, dated and signed, and they say what an organisation actually asked for rather than what a headline says it wanted. For readers of our Market Observation pages who follow the US stablecoin rules now being written under the GENIUS Act, the WSBA's letters to the OCC and the FDIC are a compact way to see which implementation questions the industry side is raising. For anyone who wants to learn to read documents like these — separating the quoted position from the commentary around it — that method is what the Uncle Sunny Academy teaches, and it is how our team, introduced on the About page, works every day.

All retrieved 13 September 2026.

• Wall Street Blockchain Alliance — homepage, The Team, Executive Committee, Advisors, Working Groups, Working Group Chairs, Membership, Individual Membership, Corporate Membership, Student Membership, Partners and Alliances, Engagement, News, Disclaimer, Antitrust Policy, Op-Ed Policy, Blockchain for Wall Street — wsba.co
• Ron Quaranta, Founder and Chairman — wsba.co/ron-quaranta-ndash-founder-chairman.html
• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance Inc (EIN 47-3778398) — projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/473778398
• SEC Crypto Task Force meeting memoranda, 27 March 2025 and 13 May 2026 — sec.gov
• WSBA response to the US Senate Banking Committee RFI on digital-asset market structure, 5 August 2025 — wsba.co (PDF)
• WSBA submission to the Bank of England consultation on sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins, 10 February 2026 — wsba.co (PDF)
• WSBA response to the FDIC NPRM on payment-stablecoin issuance, 19 February 2026 — wsba.co (PDF)
• WSBA response to the OCC GENIUS Act NPRM, 1 May 2026 — wsba.co (PDF)
• WSBA press release, AI & Quantum Working Group, 28 May 2026 — wsba.co (PDF); Crowdfund Insider, "Wall Street Blockchain Alliance Updates, Adds Quantum, AI To Policy Focus", 28 May 2026
• WSBA press releases: Cohen & Co (28 July 2025), Block, Inc., Vouched (25 August 2026), XBRL US partnership — wsba.co (PDFs); XBRL US member page — xbrl.us/member/wsba
• WSBA white paper, "Stablecoin Issuers and the Public Markets" (2026) — wsba.co (PDF)
• Coinpedia Events, WSBA Crypto & Blockchain Summit 2025, 23 October 2025
• CliftonLarsonAllen and Gould & Ratner membership announcements — claconnect.com, gouldratner.com

Educational content. Not investment advice.