Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On January 15th, Beijing time, the cryptocurrency market structure bill (CLARITY), which was about to undergo its first Senate deliberation, suddenly encountered a change — American journalist Eleanor Terrett, who has long tracked cryptocurrency legislative progress, revealed that due to the market controversy triggered by Coinbase's sudden opposition to CLARITY, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee has canceled the CLARITY deliberation hearing (markup) originally scheduled for 10:00 AM EST on January 15th (11:00 PM tonight Beijing time). The new deliberation time has not yet been determined.
- Odaily Note: Regarding the deliberation of CLARITY, the Senate Agriculture Committee (the main oversight committee for the CFTC) had also planned to deliberate concurrently with the Senate Banking Committee (the main oversight committee for the SEC) on January 15th. However, the Senate Agriculture Committee subsequently postponed its deliberation to January 27th first. The Senate Banking Committee was still preparing according to the original schedule, but it suddenly postponed the deliberation this morning just as it was approaching.
CLARITY Introduction (Skip if Familiar)
Last week, we detailed the content, significance, and progress of the CLARITY bill in the article "The Biggest Variable for the Crypto Market Outlook: Can the CLARITY Bill Pass the Senate?"
In short, CLARITY aims to clearly distinguish the classification of digital assets, divide the regulatory responsibilities of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and thereby 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.
For practitioners, the implementation of CLARITY will mean a substantive shift in the regulatory environment. In the future, there will be a more predictable compliance path. Market participants will be able to clearly know which activities, products, and transactions fall under regulatory purview, thereby reducing long-term regulatory uncertainty, litigation risks, and regulatory friction, and attracting more innovators and traditional financial institutions to enter the market.
For cryptocurrencies themselves, the implementation of CLARITY is expected to promote cryptocurrencies to become "an asset class more easily allocated by traditional capital." By resolving institutional uncertainty, it allows long-term capital that was previously unable to enter to obtain compliant entry paths, thereby raising the valuation floor of the entire market.
Severe Industry Division
Clearly, the cryptocurrency industry places great hope for the future regulatory environment on CLARITY. However, on the eve of the deliberation, major representative companies have expressed截然不同的 attitudes.
This morning, Coinbase, an important force in cryptocurrency legislative lobbying, clearly stated its opposition to the current version of the CLARITY bill.
Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong posted, stating that the bill in its current text is worse than the status quo, and it's better to have no bill than a bad bill — "The bill has major problems with DeFi and stablecoin yields. Some clauses may grant the government unlimited access to personal financial records, harm user privacy, and potentially stifle stablecoin reward mechanisms."
At the same time, other industry representative companies such as a16z, Circle, Kraken, and Ripple expressed their support for the current version of CLARITY.
a16z's star partner Chris Dixon (a main promoter of the Web3 narrative) explained: "Crypto developers need clear rules...... Essentially, this bill is meant to achieve that. It's not perfect and will need some revisions before it becomes law, but if we want the U.S. to remain the best place in the world to build the crypto future, now is the time to advance CLARITY."
Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi explained that legislating around market structure is inherently complex, and friction is inevitable. The existence of遗留问题 doesn't mean the effort has failed, but rather that we are working on the hardest tasks...... Giving up now would only lock in uncertainty, leaving U.S. companies operating in a模糊 environment while the rest of the world moves forward.
Where Exactly Are the Defects in the Current Version of the Bill?
From the statements of the various parties above, it can be seen that whether it is Coinbase, which firmly opposes, or a16z and Kraken, which have暂时选择了支持, both sides have a common point in their attitude towards the current version of CLARITY, namely, they both recognize that the current version of the bill is not perfect and has certain defects — the difference is that Coinbase has chosen a more radical抵制, directly定性 it as a "bad bill," while a16z and Kraken have chosen more conservative measures, using more moderate terms like "not perfect" and "legacy issues" in their wording.
In fact,分歧 surrounding CLARITY has long existed — after the bill passed the House of Representatives on July 17th last year, it was originally planned to be deliberated by the Senate in the middle of last year, but was then pushed to October, then to the end of last year, then to 2026, and now it seems it will have to be postponed again......
As we mentioned in the previous article, the分歧 surrounding CLARITY mainly focus on DeFi regulation, stablecoin yields, and ethical规范 concerning the Trump family.
Regarding the ethical issues related to the Trump family, one of the industry's most active lawyers, Variant Chief Legal Officer Jake Chervinsky, explained that although many Democrats have stated they will vote against CLARITY if restrictions are not imposed on this, because ethical issues do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Senate Banking Committee, the deliberation hearing cannot discuss this issue, so this分歧 is not the current focus of controversy.
- Odaily Note: This issue will definitely be a key point of attack for Democratic senators during the full Senate deliberation in the future.
As for the other core分歧, Jake Chervinsky broke them down into five more detailed points, as follows.
Point 1: Stablecoin Yield Issue
The GENIUS Act passed last year prohibited interest-bearing stablecoins, a compromise made to gain banking industry support, at the cost of stifling an entire category of innovative products.
But now, the banking industry is still dissatisfied with this clause and is trying to overturn it in CLARITY. This is because GENIUS stipulated that stablecoin issuers must not pay holders any form of interest or yield, but it did not restrict third parties from providing yields or rewards. However, Article 404 of the current CLARITY also prohibits third parties from providing yields. If the current version of the bill passes, holding stablecoins would not yield any收益 or rewards; incentives could only be obtained through payment behaviors.
Jake Chervinsky criticized that restricting stablecoin yields or rewards lacks reasonable policy basis. This would only harm U.S. consumer interests, the international status of the U.S. dollar, and U.S. national security. The reason banks strongly request this change is that large banks profit over $360 billion annually from payment and deposit services, and interest-bearing stablecoins directly threaten these profits.
Point 2: Security Tokenization
Last year, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins (Odaily Note: likely a reference to a previous initiative or a misattribution; Gary Gensler is the current SEC Chairman) launched the Project Crypto plan, aimed at upgrading the financial system by migrating it onto the chain. However, Article 505 of CLARITY seems to prevent the achievement of this goal by depriving it of the power to treat crypto assets fairly.
Paul Atkins emphasized "innovation exemptions," but Article 505 states that no securities regulatory requirements can be exempted or modified simply because a security is issued on-chain, nor can anyone be exempted from registration obligations based on this reason.
Point 3: Token Issuance
This is perhaps the most important part of CLARITY, providing a clear path for builders to issue tokens without worrying about SEC enforcement for issuing "unregistered securities."
Title 1 of CLARITY covers this path. It is clear, but not simple or cheap. Title 1 requires many projects to make信息披露, which is good in theory, but the devil is in the details — Title 1 includes extremely burdensome, nearly equity-level disclosure requirements, not much different from listed companies — including audited financial statements, etc. This system suits mature companies but is不适合 for startups.
This is just one of many details. Title 1 also requires builders to obtain SEC approval for each token;信息披露 obligations must continue long after issuance; the public fundraising cap is $200 million, etc.
Compared to this, creators might as well issue overseas or simply issue stocks.
Point 4: Developer Protection
Developers of non-custodial software are not money transmitters and should not bear user KYC obligations at all — this should be uncontroversial.
However, Title 3 of CLARITY多次暗示 regulatory agencies may extend their monitoring reach into the DeFi领域. These clauses must be deleted or amended.
Point 5: Institutional Access
Regulated financial institutions have always been reluctant to venture into DeFi due to compliance concerns.
Article 308 of CLARITY hoped to solve this problem but made a mistake on a key point — it imposes additional burdens on institutions, making it even more likely to scare them away from DeFi than the current situation.
The Radicals and the Conservatives
Based on Jake Chervinsky's breakdown of the core issues in the current version of the CLARITY bill above, it's easy to understand why Coinbase, a16z, Kraken, etc., all agree — this is not a perfect bill.
Faced with a bill containing hidden pitfalls, as representatives of the cryptocurrency industry, Coinbase, a16z, and Kraken actually have consistent fundamental interests, but differ in their strategies for争取利益.
Coinbase has chosen a more radical confrontational stance. Its core logic is that if CLARITY is passed with those industry-unfriendly clauses, even if只是模糊表述, they could be infinitely amplified at the enforcement level, forming long-term suppression of innovation. As for the subsequent cost of amending the law and political resistance, it might be far higher than the cost of continuing to endure the current regulatory uncertainty.
a16z, Kraken, Circle, and other institutions have adopted a more conservative, more "realistic" strategy. In their view, the biggest problem with the long stagnation of U.S. crypto regulation is not "the rules aren't good enough," but that there are no rules at all. Even if CLARITY has flaws, it at least provides a legislative starting point that can be revised,博弈, and gradually perfected. Once CLARITY is formally implemented, the U.S. crypto industry will for the first time have a unified federal framework. Subsequently, repairing specific clauses will反而 have more operational space.
There is no simple right or wrong here. The core of the contradiction lies in whether the bill should be advanced in its current version and how much compromise cost should be paid for it. This is also not some "industry infighting." The unified demand of both sides is to make CLARITY better; they have just chosen different博弈策略.
As Jake Chervinsky said: "For better or worse, this text will undergo significant changes before it becomes law. Let's hope it evolves for the better."
