Several leading bitcoin and blockchain companies have gotten together to take their message to Washington D.C. in a newly created lobby group called the Blockchain Association.

The new group comes as cryptocurrencies are in a swoon, with prices down overall about 80 percent from a January high, at least judging from the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index. Bloomberg noted that the drop exceeds the dot-com-era drop in the Nasdaq stock index of 78 percent starting in early 2000.

The trade association starts with five founding members: Coinbase Inc., Circle Inc., Digital Currency Group Inc., Polychain Capital LLC and Protocol Labs Inc. It’s tasked as serving “as the unified voice of the blockchain ecosystem” in D.C.

Hitting the ground running, the association has already hired Kristin Smith, previously an aide to then-Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) but more recently a lobbyist on blockchain issues for Overstock.com Inc.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time doing a lot of the basic education work in this space,” Smith told The Washington Post. “I’m excited to focus exclusively on these issues.”

In a post on Medium today, the Association said that while blockchain technologies continue to develop, there are barriers to these advancements.

“On the industry side, innovators face regulatory minefields,” the association explained. “On the policy side, lawmakers must navigate trust and safety, security concerns, and consumer protection. Among the general public and members of the media, many people do not understand what blockchain is  —  and isn’t.

Like other lobbying groups, the Blockchain Association aims to lobby for better outcomes for the industry it represents, including a “pro-innovation environment” that will allow it to meet “the growing global demand for accessible, transparent and democratic financial and technical systems.”

To do that, the association said, “we’ll foster collaboration between the community and industry leaders, educate policymakers and the public on the benefits of blockchain and related technologies, and advocate for public policy that cultivates and enables innovation and improves lives.”

Not surprisingly given the ongoing regulatory attention, the association said one of its first priorities will be lobbying politicians on laws pertaining to how cryptocurrencies are treated under U.S. tax law. It also aims to explain how anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer regulations apply to the industry.

The Blockchain Association isn’t the first group to represent the sector. The Bitcoin Foundation, founded in 2012, is intended to lobby on behalf of bitcoin, but after financial difficulties in 2015, it has struggled in that task.

Image: Blockchain Association