Author: Azuma
Original Title: The Biggest Variable in the Post-Crypto Market: Can the CLARITY Act Pass the Senate?
Overseas cryptocurrency media Decrypt reported this morning that, according to informed sources, representatives from Wall Street and the cryptocurrency industry held an offline closed-door meeting yesterday to resolve differences over the upcoming cryptocurrency market structure bill (i.e., CLARITY) to be reviewed by the Senate.
No public information had previously been leaked about this closed-door meeting. However, according to Decrypt's report, the Wall Street major trade organization "Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA)" participated in the discussion. This organization had opposed core content of the CLARITY Act, including explicitly opposing the regulatory exemption clauses for decentralized financial services like DeFi and their developers. Informed sources revealed that yesterday's talks were "constructive" and "productive" on divisive issues such as DeFi regulation.
Breakdown of CLARITY's Core Content
CLARITY stands for "Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025." The bill was initially proposed on May 29, 2025, by House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill and Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson. The bill aims to establish a regulatory framework for digital assets, clearly distinguish the classification of digital assets, and divide the regulatory responsibilities of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The top law firm Arnold & Porter provided a detailed interpretation of the bill's specifics. Specifically, CLARITY aims to classify digital assets into three clear categories: Digital Commodities, Investment Contract Assets, and Compliant Payment Stablecoins.
"Digital Commodities" are digital assets intrinsically linked to a blockchain system, whose value directly depends on the functionality or operation of the blockchain system, or on the activities or functions served when the blockchain was created or used. In other words, the value of such digital assets must rely on the functionality of the blockchain network itself, such as payments, governance, on-chain service access, incentive composition, etc. It is worth noting that the bill explicitly excludes financial instruments like securities, derivatives, and stablecoins from the definition of "Digital Commodities."
"Investment Contract Assets" are digital commodities that simultaneously meet the following conditions: first, they can be exclusively held and transferred peer-to-peer without an intermediary; second, they are recorded on a blockchain; third, they have been or are planned to be sold or transferred under an investment contract (i.e., for financing purposes). This means that if a digital commodity is sold in a financing scenario (e.g., an ICO), it will be classified as an Investment Contract Asset and treated as a security, falling under SEC regulation. Simultaneously, the CLARITY Act also separates this type of Investment Contract Asset from the traditional definition of an "investment contract" under U.S. securities law.
However, the security nature of Investment Contract Assets is "temporary." Once the digital asset is resold or transferred by a third party other than the issuer or its agent, the asset will no longer be considered a security, even if it was initially issued as an Investment Contract Asset. That is, when the asset enters the secondary market for transactions, it no longer meets the definition of an Investment Contract Asset and will be regarded as a pure Digital Commodity.
"Compliant Payment Stablecoins" refer to digital assets that meet the following conditions: first, they are designed for use as a means of payment or settlement; second, they are denominated in a fiat currency; third, issuer is regulated and examined by state or federal regulators; fourth, the issuer has an obligation to redeem at a fixed monetary value.
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Odaily Note: Compared to the classification of commodity and security attributes, stablecoin-related content is not the core of the CLARITY Act, but it is one of the current focal points of disagreement. The previously passed GENIUS Act, which cleared both houses and was signed by Trump, tacitly allowed yield-bearing stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar. However, SIFMA and banking industry lobbying teams hope to ban related content through CLARITY.
Based on this classification, CLARITY also clarifies the regulatory responsibilities of the two major agencies: the SEC and the CFTC.
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Specifically, CLARITY would grant the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over anti-fraud and anti-manipulation enforcement for digital commodities (including cash or spot transactions). It would also require intermediaries handling digital commodities—including the currently dominant cryptocurrency exchanges or other brokers and dealers—to register with the CFTC.
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Regarding the SEC, CLARITY would grant it exclusive jurisdiction over the issuers and issuance activities of Investment Contract Assets, including responsible for related registration, information disclosure, and ongoing reporting obligations. The SEC would also maintain anti-fraud and anti-manipulation jurisdiction over digital commodity transactions conducted on SEC-registered brokers, dealers, or national securities exchanges.
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For Compliant Payment Stablecoins, their issuers would be primarily regulated by banking regulators, but the CFTC and SEC would respectively maintain anti-fraud and anti-manipulation jurisdiction over transactions on their registered platforms.
What is the Significance of CLARITY?
Overall, CLARITY aims to establish a clear, functional federal regulatory framework for the U.S. digital asset market, solving the long-standing problems of regulatory ambiguity and inconsistent enforcement.
Over the past five years, the power struggle between the SEC and CFTC over digital asset regulatory authority has shaped the overall landscape of U.S. cryptocurrency regulation.
During the tenure of former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, the agency's stance was that "the vast majority of digital assets are securities," based primarily on the Howey Test established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1946. The SEC thus argued that most token sales constitute investment contracts and should therefore be subject to federal securities laws. This interpretation laid the foundation for the SEC's aggressive enforcement, during which it initiated dozens of high-profile enforcement actions against token issuers, crypto exchanges, and related service providers.
In contrast, the CFTC has been more willing to view some digital assets as commodities, especially those with a higher degree of decentralization that do not directly generate profits. Although the CFTC has consistently sought to expand its regulatory role in the cryptocurrency market and has repeatedly warned that the "regulatory vacuum" caused by unclear responsibilities could endanger market integrity, the current Commodity Exchange Act imposes limitations on the CFTC's authority in the spot commodity market, confining its power mainly to anti-fraud and anti-manipulation enforcement.
The ongoing competition between the SEC and CFTC over jurisdictional scope has kept market participants and crypto developers in a gray area—unable to determine whether their products or services should be regulated under securities or commodities laws. CLARITY is a legislative response to this regulatory stalemate, aiming to establish a stable, clear, and long-lasting framework for dividing responsibilities between the SEC and CFTC through legislation.
For the cryptocurrency industry, the implementation of CLARITY would mean a substantive shift in the regulatory environment, providing a more predictable compliance path. Market participants would be able to clearly know which activities, products, and transactions fall under regulation, thereby reducing long-term regulatory uncertainty, lowering litigation risks and regulatory friction, and attracting more innovators and traditional financial institutions to enter the market.
As for more direct market impact, although a breakthrough for CLARITY at key junctures (such as the recent Senate review) could trigger short-term news-driven positive effects, its longer-term impact lies in making cryptocurrency "an asset class more easily allocated by traditional capital." By resolving institutional uncertainty, it provides a compliant entry path for long-term capital that was previously unable to enter, thereby raising the valuation floor of the entire market.
What is the Progress of CLARITY? What are the Obstacles?
On July 17 last year, CLARITY passed the review in the U.S. House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority (vote count approximately 294–134). However, unlike the smoothly progressing GENIUS Act around the same time, CLARITY encountered resistance when subsequently transferred to the Senate due to disagreements among various factions.
Overall, the disagreements surrounding CLARITY mainly focus on the regulatory approach to DeFi, the issue of yield-bearing stablecoins, and the ethical standards of the Trump family.
Among these, regulation targeting DeFi is the most sensitive point of disagreement. Advocates in the cryptocurrency field hope to protect developers and open-source software, arguing that code should not be considered a regulated financial intermediary. However, Wall Street expresses concerns citing money laundering, evasion of sanctions, and national security risks, arguing that if such safeguards are too broad, they could bring risks and strongly demand that DeFi be纳入 traditional financial regulation.
Another key disagreement lies in yield-bearing stablecoins. As mentioned earlier, the GENIUS Act tacitly allowed the existence of this type of stablecoin. However, major U.S. banks have been actively lobbying to prohibit stablecoin issuers from transferring the yield from reserve assets (such as Treasury bonds) to holders, to prevent this window from causing deposits to flow out of the traditional banking system. The cryptocurrency industry is clearly unwilling to be shackled. Industry representatives are criticizing the banking industry's protectionism while also emphasizing that GENIUS has already addressed the regulatory and licensing issues related to stablecoins, making it unnecessary to revisit the discussion.
Due to persistent disagreements, the bill was originally scheduled for review mid-last year but was subsequently pushed to October, then to the end of last year, and then again to 2026... Until this Tuesday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott officially announced that the committee will vote on the bill on January 15.
Tim Scott is a Republican Senator from South Carolina. Although the cryptocurrency industry generally believes that the January 15 schedule is too rushed,不利于 resolving differences and may even ruin the bill's chance of approval this year, Tim Scott insisted on this arrangement. In an interview with Breitbart, Tim Scott said: "I think we have to go public and vote. Therefore, next Thursday we will vote on CLARITY. Over the past six months or more, through unremitting efforts, we have ensured that every member of the committee has seen multiple drafts."
So the current situation is that next week's vote will determine whether CLARITY can pass the Senate Banking Committee—a crucial step before the bill is finally submitted to the full Senate for review. Furthermore, it only has a chance to ultimately pass the Senate if it gains bipartisan support in the committee review. But according to multiple reports, it is still unclear whether the bill has enough votes to pass the committee's review.
Although the closed-door meeting mentioned at the beginning of this article brought some positive news, it is still insufficient to guarantee a smooth passage in next week's vote. In Decrypt's report, even a representative from the cryptocurrency industry bluntly stated: "I can't believe we're finally seeing Democrats and Republicans proactively cooperating on something, and we might kill it because of an arbitrary schedule."
Jake Ostrovskis, OTC负责人 at Wintermute, mentioned the time生死线 for CLARITY to break through the Senate from a longer-term perspective: "The market generally believes that April is the last realistic deadline for a full Senate vote (before the political storm of the midterm elections erupts). To achieve this, the SEC and CFTC need to reach an agreement on the amendments by the end of January. This matter is likely to become further politicized, so expect related news reports throughout January as the situation develops."
In short, next week's Senate Banking Committee vote will kick off CLARITY's闯关 journey. Although the current situation remains unclear, a clear directional expectation will be seen next week.
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